Adapting US-centric DE&I frameworks for European workplaces requires navigating complex legal, linguistic, and cultural differences. Success lies in shifting from global standardization to localized cultural intelligence that addresses specific regional needs.
Imagine the following scenario: it is Monday morning at a branch of a large multinational technology company in Milan, Paris or Berlin. During the global meeting, which is streamed from California, the chief diversity officer proudly presents the new corporate goals for the fiscal year. The conversation covers quotas for ‘Latino/Hispanic’ representation, celebrating Juneteenth, and offering incentives for egg freezing as a means of empowering women.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, European employees nod, sign the policies and return to their desks feeling alienated. This is not due to a lack of interest in equality; quite the contrary. Rather, it is the perception of being faced with a form of ‘managerial colonialism’. This is a phenomenon whereby Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) models, forged in the specific sociological context of the United States, are exported en masse to Europe as if they were universal software. This ignores the fact that culture is not a binary code that is the same for everyone.
The intent is almost always noble, but the execution often risks being performative, ineffective or even counterproductive. Let’s analyse why this cultural ‘copy and paste’ approach falls short when it crosses the Atlantic, moving beyond the most well-known cases of ‘rainbow washing’ or ‘Black History Month’.
The obsession with categorisation and the taboo surrounding data
The first and most obvious obstacle is the issue of racial categorisation. The American model is the product of a society built on legal segregation and the concept of ‘race’ as a census category. In the US, asking an employee to tick a box to identify as “Caucasian”, “Black”, “Hispanic” or “Asian” is standard practice for measuring progress.
Let’s bring this approach to Europe. In France, collecting ethnic data is illegal and unconstitutional, based on the republican ideal of seeing no colours, only citizens. In Germany, cataloguing people on an ethnic basis evokes the darkest ghosts of the 20th century and the Holocaust. In Italy, the constitution itself rejects racial distinctions.
When multinationals impose global diversity surveys, they encounter both the GDPR and deep cultural resistance in Europe. However, the problem is not only legal; it is also substantial. American categories do not reflect European reality. In Europe, discrimination often affects groups that do not exist or are invisible in US grids: these include the Romani and Sinti (the largest ethnic minority in Europe, often overlooked by corporations), immigrants from Eastern Europe and second-generation Maghrebians, who do not necessarily identify with African-American history or culture. Importing the US grid makes the victims of European racism invisible in order to highlight those of American racism.
Another battlefield is inclusive language. In the Anglo-Saxon world, using pronouns such as ‘he/him’, ‘she/her’ or ‘they/them’ in email signatures or on LinkedIn has become a powerful sign of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. The English language, with its lack of gender inflection, allows for a relatively smooth transition to the singular ‘they’.
In Neo-Latin languages such as Italian, French and Spanish, or German, gender is grammatically pervasive, permeating articles, nouns, adjectives and past participles. Corporate mandates to ‘declare pronouns’ or use gender-neutral language clash with these rigid structures.
The most striking example of this dissonance is the term ‘Latinx’. Coined in US academia to neutralise the gender of ‘Latino/Latina’, it has been heavily promoted in global corporate communications. However, surveys show that the vast majority of people living in Spain or Latin America find it unpronounceable and disrespectful of Spanish grammar, as well as imperialistic. This top-down approach to inclusion ends up excluding the very people it seeks to represent, becoming a form of linguistic cultural imposition.
Corporate welfare versus the welfare state: the example of ‘egg freezing’
The differences become more acute when it comes to women and parenthood.
In the United States, where paid maternity leave is not guaranteed at federal level and healthcare is private, companies act as a ‘surrogate state’. In this context, offering egg freezing as a benefit to allow employees to postpone motherhood and focus on their careers is presented as a feminist act of liberation.
In Europe, this narrative clashes violently. In contexts where long, paid maternity leave and state protections exist (think Scandinavia, but also France or Italy), the offer of social freezing by companies is often viewed negatively: as a way of saying, ‘Don’t have children now; work harder; we’ll pay you to put your private life on hold.’
What is seen as empowerment in San Francisco may be viewed as an undue intrusion of capitalism into the biological and private spheres, as well as a societal failure to support motherhood, in Rome or Paris.
Religion and secularism are blind spots
The management of religious diversity also shows deep cracks. The Anglo-Saxon model of multiculturalism tends towards accommodation: spaces for prayer are created, different holidays are celebrated, and faith-based ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) are encouraged.
In France, however, the home of laïcité, religion is considered a strictly private matter that should not enter the public or work sphere. An American company that actively encourages the display of religious symbols or the formation of prayer groups in the office could cause significant discomfort, or even lead to legal issues, in a French subsidiary, where neutrality is considered the ultimate form of respect and inclusion. What is ‘inclusive’ in New York becomes ‘divisive’ in Paris.
The big absentee: social class
Finally, the elephant in the room is social class. The American DE&I debate focuses heavily on race and gender but is often ‘blind’ to class. In Europe, social class remains one of the strongest predictors of professional success or failure.
In the UK, the accent you speak with or the private school you attended can be greater barriers to entry than skin colour in many sectors. In France, the elitism of the Grandes Écoles creates an impenetrable glass ceiling for those from public universities, regardless of ethnicity. In Italy, low social mobility affects everyone.
Policies imported from the US rarely address socio-economic background or accent, focusing instead on visible diversity metrics. Consequently, a company may celebrate its diversity based on hiring managers from various ethnic backgrounds while overlooking the fact that they all graduated from the same three elite international business schools. This approach fails to recognise the true diversity of thought and experience that stems from different social backgrounds.
Towards local cultural intelligence
Talking about managerial colonialism does not mean dismissing DE&I. On the contrary, it means wanting to save it from its own superficiality. Europe desperately needs its own inclusion, not someone else’s.
Global companies must transition from a compliance-based approach to one of cultural intelligence. Translating slides from English is not enough. Concepts must be translated too.
This means giving local managers autonomy to identify underrepresented minorities in their territories. In Europe, inclusion is perhaps more about welfare, union rights and fighting classism than pronouns in signatures.
As long as corporations treat Europe as a peripheral extension of the United States, their diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) policies will remain mere window dressing in annual reports, unable to touch the hearts and minds of the people who work there. True inclusion requires an effort to understand not only differences between people, but also between the places where these people live.