DEI vs. MEI: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters
In the past few years, two competing frameworks have emerged in discussions about hiring, promotions, and workplace culture: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence (MEI), each representing competing ideas about what makes a workplace truly fair and effective. While DEI tends to focus on removing systemic inequities, MEI emphasizes a performance-based approach.
But are these approaches in opposition? Is one inherently better? Or can we integrate both into our workplace culture?
What Is DEI?
As previously mentioned, DEI stands for:
Diversity: Emphasizing varied identities, backgrounds, and perspectives in the workplace.
Equity: Recognizing and addressing historical and structural barriers to ensure fair opportunities for all.
Inclusion: Creating an environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute.
Example: How a company might use DEI initiatives to improve representation and address disparities in hiring and promotion.
Together, diversity, equity and inclusion serve as the pillars of establishing equitable workplace practices that not only ensure employees are treated respectfully, but that negative biases do not become the standard within a workplace.
A Brief History of DEI
The practice of DEI (before it was called that!) began in the 1960s following the U.S. Civil Rights Act and establishment of affirmative action policies. These addressed the specific pain points underrepresented groups experienced, including representation, equal pay, and equal opportunity.
From the 1970s until the 1990s, the concept of DEI continued to evolve, adding intersectional approaches with the Feminist Movement and the needs of various identities, including ethnic and religious communities, new immigrants, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
From the 2000s onward, a variety of positive notes improved outcomes for underrepresented communities, including:
The legalization of same-sex marriage;
The establishment of long-term training related to diversity
Social movements (#MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, and #StopAAPIHate) drew further attention to historic inequities, leading to the expansion of initiatives and the overall growth of the DEI industry.
What About Now?
Now, DEI serves as a shorthand for training and consulting initiatives that improve outcomes for marginalized communities, especially in the workplace. When an organization seeks DEI training, they may be looking for:
An audit of internal and external policies and procedures, including hiring, onboarding, accessibility, and accommodations.
Training on a variety of topics including, but not limited to, leadership training, observance day training, cultural competency, psychological safety, and more.
Pay equity audits, which analyze the pay of various employees to ensure they are being compensated equitably.
And much, much more!
What is MEI?
Merit: The idea that advancement should be based solely on skills, qualifications, and performance.
Excellence: Pursuing the highest standard of work, often emphasizing competition and maximizing individual or organizational output.
Intelligence: Prioritizing cognitive ability, problem-solving, and technical skills as primary indicators of value.
For proponents of MEI, the preference comes down to the concept of establishing a “meritocracy” across a workplace. This means choosing employees based purely on their demonstrated abilities and current merit, without consideration to the potential barriers and biases that may influence these choices.
A Brief History of MEI
MEI is a fairly new concept. It emerged when Alexandr Wang, the CEO of the tech company Scale AI. His approach focuses purely on abilities and merit, rather than reviewing the pain points of underrepresented groups. However, Wang has said that his approach will, “naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and ideas.”
On the surface, MEI makes complete sense: workplaces should hire based on merit, excellence, and intelligence in relation to the roles of employees. It makes sense that MEI appeals to some, especially within the tech world where specific skills and technical achievements play a huge role in the work.
The Potential Challenges of DEI
This is not to say that DEI is not without its challenges. Some common concerns include:
Resistance to Change: Employees and leadership accustomed to traditional hiring and promotion practices may feel uneasy about shifting towards equity-focused strategies, sometimes perceiving them as unfair advantages rather than corrective measures.
Measuring Impact: Unlike MEI, which often relies on clear performance metrics, the success of DEI initiatives can be harder to quantify. Organizations may struggle to measure progress beyond representation numbers, making it difficult to track long-term impact.
Balancing Inclusion and Merit: As an organization works to implement DEI, they may struggle to align their efforts with existing performance-based measures.
Risk of Tokenism: If not implemented thoughtfully, DEI efforts can sometimes result in surface-level diversity without meaningful inclusion. Hiring diverse talent without creating an equitable, supportive environment can lead to high turnover and dissatisfaction.
The key to a DEI-driven approach is ensuring that initiatives go beyond optics and lead to sustainable, systemic change. Additionally, it is important to provide space to address the reasons for DEI and why it’s needed, especially when faced with backlash.
The Potential Challenges of MEI
Like any workplace initiative, MEI faces some challenges within its implementation. These include:
Assumption of a Level Playing Field: MEI assumes that all employees have equal access to education, mentorship, and professional networks. However, systemic factors (i.e. socioeconomic background, racism, sexism) may impact an individual’s ability to demonstrate merit in traditional ways.
The Subjectivity of "Excellence": While everyone strives for excellence, the definition varies across industries, cultures, and individuals, and can be hard to pin down with an exact definition.
Exclusionary Standards: Without awareness of bias, MEI-based hiring and promotion decisions may unintentionally disqualify individuals based on appearance or personal style, disabilities, or race and ethnicity.
Narrow Evaluation Metrics: As MEI is focusing primarily on performance-based skills, it can potentially undermine other soft skills that may indicate potential in other areas.
Of course, MEI-driven approaches are rooted in good intentions, seeking to find the best people to do the best job. However, it can lead us to overlook the real-world consequences of bias and privilege, risking the reinforcement of existing inequalities.
The Differences Between DEI and MEI
Equity and Equality
While equity and equality sound very similar, they are very different to one another. DEI tends to focus on equity while MEI is concerned with equality. But what do they mean?
Equity is all about ensuring that everyone has fair access to the various resources, opportunities, and experiences. It’s about removing systemic barriers that impact marginalized groups and acknowledging that people come from different places and require varying levels of support.
It requires organizations to review their workplace culture, policies, and procedures carefully, potentially with the assistance of an outside consultant, to ensure equity across the board.
On the other hand, equality is about treating everyone the same way regardless of their starting point. It assumes that if the same resources and opportunities are available to everyone, fairness comes naturally after.
Hiring and Promotion Frameworks
DEI approaches hiring by potentially finding employees via diverse channels and targeted recruitment strategies. They may provide unconscious bias training for hiring managers and a structured promotion process that accounts for disadvantages.
MEI evaluates potential candidates utilizing the same criteria across the board. However, that doesn’t mean hiring managers do not receive unconscious bias training. Additionally, promotions and advancement are available for everyone in the same way, and structured around achievements and performance.
Workplace Culture
MEI emphasizes uniformity when it comes to policies, expectations, and workplace culture. There will still be policies and procedures focused on anti-harassement in a number of areas in the workplace, and as long as everyone follows the same rules, the workplace remains inclusive.
DEI adapts policies and practices to be more equitable based on factors like race, gender, disabilities, and socioeconomic background. They may create employee resource groups (ERGs) and offer additional arrangements and flexible work options to address the specific needs of a small number of employees.
The Similarities Between DEI and MEI
Despite the differences in equity and equality, hiring and promotion, and workplace culture, DEI and MEI do have a lot of overlapping qualities, such as:
✅ Specific policies and procedures that are targeted at workplace safety for all.
✅ Hiring practices remain centered around hiring the best possible candidate, regardless of the channels in which they are found.
✅ They both may incorporate training in regards to harassment and bias.
✅ Their approaches may differ, but both MEI and DEI prioritize Employee retention, engagement, and workplace fairness.
Moving Beyond MEI vs. DEI
It’s important to remember that MEI and DEI aren’t polar opposites. A workplace will always benefit from both individual efforts (MEI’s approach) and a focus on sustaining systemic equity (DEI’s approach).
By combining these approaches, organizations can create a structured, yet flexible, workplace that provides equal opportunities while also removing systemic barriers and ensuring support systems are present. The most successful workplaces are those that recognize the value of both consistency and adaptability; that way, inclusion isn’t just a policy, but a lived reality for all employees.
