The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters. This column is part of the weekly Reuters Sustainable Finance newsletter, which you can sign up for here https://www.reuters.com/newsletters/reuters-sustainable-finance/

By Ross Kerber

BOSTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Through comments and executive orders, U.S. President Donald Trump and his top officials have launched a campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion practices in government, one they aim to extend to the private sector.

Companies may well dial back their rhetoric, but getting them to abandon things like reports on workforce demographics - a central focus of pro-DEI activists - would be a bigger lift, say analysts who follow corporate disclosures related to the topic.

For one thing, investors still care about the area, making it harder for companies to quit, said Josh Ramer, CEO of DiversIQ, which tracks data for investors, consulting firms and corporate clients.

"I don't see it changing much as far as the collection of data, but companies might be quieter about how they report it," Ramer said.

He cited the case of motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson HOG.N, which in August described changes including that it no longer has "supplier diversity spend goals," a move seen as a win by anti-DEI activists. But the company still released a relatively complete report on its workforce demographics in December, he said.

Excluding international operations, the report showed among other things that Blacks, Hispanics and Asians' combined share of management positions at the company rose to 12% in 2023 from 5% in 2020.

Harley did not respond to requests for comment.

MORE DATA PLEASE

Harley's figures follow categories set by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It requires all companies with more than 100 employees to show the race and gender of their workforce, by job description.

Officially, companies' reports are confidential, but activists successfully pressed for public disclosure, especially after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. As of last year 83% of S&P 500 companies make the data public, according to DiversIQ, up from just 5% in 2019.

The publication of its EEO-1 report is meant to "provide additional transparency into our workforce," wrote one S&P 500 constituent, chipmaker Qualcomm QCOM.O in its proxy statement last week. "We believe that a diverse workforce is important to our success," the document states.

Qualcomm did not respond to requests for additional comment.

One dramatic step would be if Republican officials move to end the collection of the workforce diversity data in the first place. A section of the hard-right policy initiative known as "Project 2025" calls for just that.

The document states the employee information could lead to racial quotas and that "Crudely categorizing employees by race or ethnicity fails to recognize the diversity of the American workforce."

Messages to the author of that section, Jonathan Berry, a Labor Department official during Trump's first term, were not returned. The EEOC's acting chair, Andrea Lucas, appointed by Trump last week, was not available for comment on Tuesday, a representative said.

PAY UP

Companies have also embraced DEI workforce measures by tying CEO pay to the area. Among Fortune 100 companies, research firm Equilar found 74% included some type of environmental or social metric in the targets used for executives' compensation according to their most recent proxy statements, up from 38% in 2019.

Courtney Yu, Equilar director of research, said companies might remove some metrics, but that could be complicated since pay plans are subject to shareholder approval.

"If the company's shareholders still consider ESG important on some level, then most companies will choose to just change what they focus on or change to qualitative metrics instead of quantitative," Yu said via e-mail.

Yu added he expects companies with government contracts to be "more likely to drop DEI programs, though many may try to chart a middle ground by replacing DEI-specific language with broader language that may still please shareholders."

(Reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio)

((ross.kerber@thomsonreuters.com; (617) 412 0093))