Corporate culture has experienced significant whiplash in recent years. The 2020 civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd led companies to ramp up DEI efforts. The Great Resignation of 2021 forced companies to start expanding engagement programs across the board to retain employees. And in 2025, attacks on DEI from the US executive branch led to the most extensive retraction of diversity and inclusion programs in corporate history.

However, inclusion and culture still matter, even if companies are softening their language to that effect. Many corporate DEI programs and strategies may now fall under a more generic “inclusion” label, but the end goals remain the same. A robust body of data shows that businesses that lean into demographic and psychographic diversity are more profitable and have more resilient teams. The question is how to ensure that inclusion happens authentically within a political landscape obsessed with labels.

In 2026 and beyond, companies will find that a strategic combination of tried-and-true employee resource groups and mentoring programs will help foster the inclusive culture needed to thrive amid political uncertainties.

Why Building Inclusive Culture Is a Top Mentoring Trend for 2026

There are three impossible-to-ignore reasons why building an inclusive culture with ERG-powered mentoring is a top trend for 2026 (and beyond):

1. Inclusion drives business outcomes (and exclusion destroys them)

The business case for inclusion isn’t new, but it’s worth repeating because the data is overwhelming. McKinsey leads the way on this end, with data that shows companies with diverse leadership teams (executive level and boards) are holistically better than those without.

McKinsey assesses companies in 5 areas of holistic impact:

1. Financial and operational
2. Capabilities
3. Health and workforce
4. Customers
5. Social and environmental

In previous studies, McKinsey has found that companies with a larger proportion of women and individuals from BIPOC communities showed above-average profitability.

According to McKinsey:

In a 2023 expansion of its study on leadership DEI and business impact, McKinsey found that companies with clear pathways for women and minorities to move into leadership positions are more likely to have better:

• Business ethics
• Corporate citizenship
• Talent attraction and retention
• Labor practices
• Operational ecoefficiency
• Climate strategies

This comes together into a clear, data-backed narrative for companies that need to retain inclusive practices, even amidst an anti-inclusive political environment. Bottom-line metrics improve with inclusive practices.

ERGs have a steady, proven tradition of providing inclusive spaces that foster employee development, where mentoring often happens organically, but cross-network mentor-mentee relationships are easily established through a structured, strategic approach.

There’s no prescription on how a company should create those practices or maintain them going forward. This is where many companies have gotten the recipe wrong in the past. Assuming that DEI is about checking boxes has resulted in significant cultural and political backlash. The resultant benefits of diverse teams are well established; how to get there has not always been.

When innovation matters, so does diversity

Meanwhile, data on the impact of diverse teams on innovation has been around for nearly a decade. Boston Consulting Group found that companies with more diverse management teams have 19 percentage points higher revenue growth through innovation.

When people from different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives collaborate:

• They spot opportunities others miss
• They challenge groupthink
• They build products and services that appeal to broader markets

And of course, there’s another side to this story: Exclusion actively harms business performance.

In its 2023 Hiring and Workplace Trends study, Indeed and Glassdoor found that:

• 72% of workers aged 18 to 34 would turn down a job offer or leave a company that didn’t value DEIB
• 67% would do the same if there were a gender imbalance in company leadership
• 65% would do the same if there were a lack of racial/ethnic diversity among company leadership

Unfortunately, the economic environment in 2025 has made this threat easy to ignore. Employees have little power in a “low-fire, low-hire” job market. But these dynamics shift all the time. Company leadership can’t rely on employees being powerless forever. Once that dynamic shifts, those organizations that have overcorrected their inclusion practices will suffer the first and hardest wave of turnover and disengagement.

2. Employees still want inclusive workplaces (even if the messaging has changed)

We touched on this one above, but it’s important to dig into it more here. Although messaging at the top has changed due to political turbulence, employee expectations have not.

In its 2025 report, The Illusive ROI of DEI, Sogolytics found some compelling survey data that underscores the value of DEI from an employee perspective. The biggest takeaway?

Employees still want DEI and still see the vast benefits it offers.

• 69% of Millennials say a company’s stance on DEI would impact their decision to accept a job offer, and 66% said it would impact their decision to stay at a job
• 58% of Gen X workers agree with Millennials on job offers and DEI, and 52% agreed on DEI’s impact on their retention
• 45% of Gen Z workers aligned with the idea that company DEI practices would impact their decision to accept a job offer, while 43% said it would impact their decision to stay

This data may have some individuals scratching their heads.

“Wait…doesn’t Gen Z value DEI more?”

Yes, but…look at the job market.

Gen Z workers are as idealistic as any generation before them, but they’re also practical. As we wrote in our mentoring trends post on the Gen Z skills gap, Gen Z has experienced nothing but hardship since its first cohorts entered adulthood. For those just getting started in a career, DEI initiatives will take a back seat to mere survival.

As such, don’t let that number fool you. Millennials and Gen X are in a much better position to be discriminating about how their employers run the workplace. Gen Z doesn’t have that luxury… yet. It stands to reason that as employees gain more years of experience and become more marketable to employers, they’re more likely to feel empowered to be choosy about their work.

This is the case with Millennials and Gen X, who have those years of experience that still make them targeted hires in today’s job market. As Randstad data shows, entry-level job postings have declined dramatically since the beginning of 2024. These are the roles Gen Z workers would be filling. Instead, they’re competing with individuals who have more years of experience and skills. It’s hard to rationalize saying no to work when just getting your foot in the door anywhere is difficult.

Companies are playing it safe while ignoring the benefits that inclusion brings to the bottom line and ignoring what most of their employees want. When companies pulled back their public DEI commitments in 2025, many employees felt abandoned. They watched as programs designed to support and connect them were quietly dismantled or rebranded beyond recognition.

People simply don’t feel they can trust business leaders anymore, especially when it comes to inclusion. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer found that the fear of being discriminated against has increased by double-digits in over a dozen countries, including the U.S. Additionally, people’s trust that their employer is doing what’s right has fallen almost across the board, as has the fear that business leaders are intentionally lying to us.

In case you need to summarize this in your head:

1. Most workers still value DEI at work as a company value
2. Fearing government reprisal and business impact (primarily the US), businesses have retreated from DEI, either completely dismantling or rebranding programs to neutralize inclusion efforts
3. Companies undervalue the role DEI plays in profitability, engagement, and retention
4. Younger workers may seem to care less about DEI, but are also in survival mode, leading to more concern over simply getting a job
5. Distrust underpins sentiment toward businesses and business leaders, and more people than ever fear discrimination, but are afraid to voice those concerns

Many business leaders and employees are living in a culture of fear right now. But that doesn’t mean inclusion matters less. There may be a short-term gain in retreating from inclusion goals, but there’s a long-term risk to employee engagement and retention.

3. Formal programs are disappearing, but the need for human connection remains

As we’ve noted, many organizations in the US and abroad quickly dismantled their DEI infrastructure in 2025.

• Employee resource groups and other affinity groups have been defunded
• Diversity training has been canceled
• Chief diversity officers have been laid off or reassigned

But the problems those programs were designed to address haven’t vanished. Underrepresented employees still face barriers to advancement and are at a higher risk of unemployment.

Via the New York Times, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that Black employment has increased by 41% since 2024, driven in no small part by Federal layoffs and the retraction of programs intended to encourage hiring of BIPOC candidates.

Alongside these dire figures, teams at many organizations still struggle with unconscious bias, and junior employees still lack access to the networks and relationships that drive career growth.

The programmatic approach to inclusion got many things wrong. Much of the fault lies in overly aggressive and misguided diversity training.

I’ve heard horror stories, including one in which a diversity trainer began the session by stating that there would be no questions, then spent the whole hour talking about the evils of white people.

This is not helpful. And unfortunately, it was also common in workplace DEI trainings for years. It’s hard to blame many potential supporters of DEI for feeling absolutely turned off by an approach focused on shame and alienation.

This is where mentoring-backed ERGs become not just helpful, but essential

Unlike formal DEI programs that can be targeted and dismantled, mentoring relationships are organic, personal, and harder to politicize. And when paired with ERGs, which can be created to serve everyone in an organization, and can be open to everyone, individuals can find connection and mentorship in ways that allow them to build an inclusive culture without the brow-beating that forced diversity programs often utilize.

When done well, this strategy creates the conditions for inclusion without requiring the institutional infrastructure that’s become politically vulnerable.

• A mentor helping a mentee navigate organizational politics isn’t doing “DEI work”—they’re doing career development
• A senior leader sponsoring a high-potential employee from a different background isn’t running a diversity program—they’re building the leadership pipeline
• Cross-cultural peer mentoring using paired matching between ERGs isn’t sensitivity training—it’s knowledge sharing

The outcomes are the same. The framing is different. And in the current political climate, that distinction matters.

The Mentoring + ERG Pairing Creates Authentic Inclusion Without Political Risk

Here’s the beautiful thing about mentoring through ERGs: it builds inclusion through human relationships, not corporate mandates.

• You can’t legislate belonging.
• You can’t mandate connection.
• But you can create the conditions where they naturally emerge.

That’s what a structured and thoughtful approach that merges ERGs and mentoring can do.

Why mentoring and ERGS succeeds where formal programs struggle

Mentoring-backed ERGs work to help build an inclusive culture because they operate at the level of individual relationships rather than institutional policy. It’s personal, not political. This is a pairing that helps people grow through human connection, respecting but also crossing demographic barriers.

Here’s why mentoring is uniquely positioned to foster inclusion in the current environment.

Mentoring builds cross-network bridges that respect and promote differences built into ERGs frameworks

When people from different backgrounds, departments, or demographics form mentoring relationships, they develop a genuine understanding of each other’s experiences.

When a younger employee reverse-mentors a senior leader, they can help them understand emerging workplace expectations. Cringey and divisive diversity training exercises are out the window. Instead, you opt for genuine relationships where people come to see each other as whole humans, not stereotypes.

Mentoring creates access to hidden networks.

One of the biggest barriers to advancement for underrepresented employees is a lack of access to informal networks where real power and opportunity flow. Mentoring relationships explicitly address this gap, particularly when they are cross-network and leverage ERGs.

A mentor can introduce their mentee to key stakeholders. They can explain unwritten rules. They can advocate behind closed doors. This is how inclusion actually happens—not through policies, but through people who use their access to create opportunities for others.

Mentoring develops skills in context

Generic diversity training programs often fail because they’re divorced from real work. Business aligned ERGs are laser-focused on achieving key business objectives through program structure. When tied with mentoring, they embed learning in actual job contexts.

This contextual learning is particularly valuable for employees from underrepresented groups who may lack role models to show them how to succeed within their specific organizational culture.

Lack of exposure to what business leadership looks like is an understated issue that keeps underrepresented groups from career advancement. For many leaders, exposure and training starts at home. But within BIPOC communities and homes, examples to follow and learn from are few and far between.

Data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that the share of BIPOC are heavily underrepresented in professional occupations with more standard career pathing towards management roles compared to their share of the workforce. This speaks not only to notable barriers to advancement but also to educational barriers in the home that often lead to institutional knowledge of how to navigate careers in the high-earning professions.

Mentoring and ERGs are typically opt-in and relationship-driven

Unlike mandatory diversity training that triggers resistance, ERG participation is largely voluntary. People choose to participate. They invest in the relationships they find within those groups. There’s no forced compliance, just genuine connection.

This makes mentoring layers far more effective at changing attitudes and behaviors. You can make someone sit through a workshop about unconscious bias, but you can’t make them care. When they develop a real relationship with someone different from themselves, caring happens naturally.

How to Build an ERG Mentoring Program That Fosters Inclusion

There’s a chance you already have mentoring programs in place. And you may already have ERGs or some form of community or affinity groups. Merging these two, or layering a mentoring compontent on top of the ERGS, will help create authentic inclusive pathways that no forced diversity training ever could. And it undercuts the political drama playing out in real time because it relies on organic, human-driven relationship building across demographics.

ERG Mentoring creates genuine inclusion without triggering political blowback. But it starts with creating a strategic design around connection and then encouraging that connection with simplified structure and incentives.

1. Frame mentoring around universal career development goals

Don’t lead with inclusion or diversity in your messaging. This is what has gotten many companies in trouble. While not illegal (despite what you may have heard) it can be divisive and alienating.

Instead, lead with career growth, skill development, and leadership pipeline building. These are objectives everyone can support, regardless of their political views.

When you launch your mentoring program, talk about:

• Accelerating high-potential employees into leadership roles
• Transferring critical knowledge before retirement
• Developing next-generation skills across the organization
• Building stronger cross-functional collaboration
• Increasing employee engagement and retention

These are business-critical goals that happen to create more inclusive outcomes when pursued through mentoring.

2. Use algorithmic matching to create diverse pairings without mandating them

Here’s where technology becomes your ally and the arbiter of your inclusion.

Algorithmic matching, like what you’ll find through MentorcliQ’s platform, can consider factors like background, experience, department, and demographics when creating pairings—but they do it invisibly, as part of a holistic matching process.

You’re not saying “we’re pairing people across demographic lines.” You’re saying “we’re matching people to maximize learning, expose them to different perspectives, and build cross-organizational relationships.”

Keep in mind, you can weight these criteria differently to ensure your matches are more aligned to creating an inclusive culture.

The result is diverse mentoring pairs that emerge naturally from a skills-based matching process where demographic differences are valued within the match criteria.

No quotas. No mandates. Just smart pairing that happens to create inclusion.

You can also give employees agency in the process. Let them express preferences about what they want to learn and who they want to learn from. When the mentoring platform suggests diverse matches based on complementary skills and goals, participants choose them because they make sense, not because they’re required.

3. Offer multiple mentoring formats to meet different needs

Not every employee needs or wants the same type of mentoring. Build a diverse ecosystem of mentoring formats that naturally serve different inclusion objectives:

• Traditional 1:1 mentoring works well for career development and leadership preparation. These longer-term relationships help underrepresented employees navigate organizational culture and access advancement opportunities.

• Peer mentoring creates safe spaces for employees to support each other through shared experiences. New parents, working caregivers, and employees with disabilities—peer connections provide community and practical advice without needing formal programs.

• Group mentoring and mentoring circles expose participants to diverse perspectives in low-stakes settings. A mentoring circle with six people from different backgrounds naturally creates cross-cultural understanding through shared vulnerability and learning.

• Reverse mentoring is perhaps the most politically safe format while being incredibly effective at building inclusion. Younger employees teaching senior leaders about emerging technologies, social trends, or new workplace expectations flips traditional power dynamics. It positions diverse voices as experts while developing relationships across hierarchical levels.

• Flash mentoring allows quick, specific skill transfer. These short-term engagements feel less risky to participants who might be hesitant about longer commitments, making them great entry points for building cross-demographic relationships.

When you offer this variety, employees self-select into formats that meet their needs. Inclusion happens through choice, not coercion.

4. Measure outcomes that matter to leadership

Track metrics that demonstrate business value, not just diversity statistics:

• Employee retention rates (especially for high performers)
• Internal promotion rates versus external hiring
• Time-to-productivity for new hires
• Employee engagement scores
• Knowledge transfer effectiveness
• Leadership pipeline strength

These metrics demonstrate ROI while indirectly capturing inclusion outcomes. When you show that mentored employees are promoted more often and stay longer, you’re demonstrating business impact. The fact that this disproportionately benefits underrepresented groups is a feature, not the headline.

You can also track relationship quality metrics:

• Satisfaction with mentoring relationships
• Frequency and quality of mentoring interactions
• Skill development self-assessments
• Career confidence improvements

These show that mentoring creates the conditions for growth and belonging without explicitly measuring diversity.

Why not try our Mentoring Program Goal Wizard to help determine the best way to measure program results?

5. Train mentors to navigate inclusion without making it awkward

Your mentors need practical guidance on how to support mentees from different backgrounds without making identity the focus of every conversation.

Teach them to:

• Ask open questions about challenges and aspirations
• Listen for experiences that might differ from their own
• Offer to make introductions and create opportunities
• Advocate for their mentees in rooms where decisions are made
• Challenge unfair assumptions when they hear them
• Provide honest feedback with cultural awareness
• Acknowledge when they don't understand something and seek to learn

This isn't "diversity training." It's mentoring best practices that happen to address inclusion challenges.

Your mentor training should also address how to handle difficult situations:

• What do you do when your mentee experiences discrimination?
• How do you advocate for someone whose communication style differs from organizational norms?
• How do you help a mentee navigate bias without making them feel like a victim?

These are real mentoring challenges that require thoughtful guidance. Address them directly, and your mentors will be equipped to create genuinely inclusive relationships.

6. Celebrate mentoring success stories that demonstrate inclusion

Share stories of mentoring relationships that led to career breakthroughs.

When a mentee from an underrepresented background gets promoted, talk about how mentoring helped prepare them. When a cross-cultural mentoring pair collaborates on an innovative project, highlight their achievement.

You're not saying "look at our diversity numbers." You're saying, "Look at what happens when we invest in developing our people through relationships."

These stories create aspirational models that encourage others to engage. They demonstrate that mentoring works. And they reinforce an inclusive culture by making diverse success visible and celebrated.

The Political Landscape Will Shift Again (But Human Connection Won't)

Chasing political change as a business practice is a losing scenario. The political environment around diversity, equity, and inclusion will continue to change. What's toxic today might be celebrated tomorrow. What's mandatory this year might be forbidden next year.

But the human need for belonging, the business value of diverse perspectives, and the power of relationships to drive growth are consistent. There's strong data to back that up.

Mentoring programs built on ERG frameworks will weather political storms because they're not dependent on any particular ideological framework. They work because they tap into fundamental human dynamics: we learn from each other, we grow through relationships, and we perform better when we feel valued and supported.

Companies that recognize this will build mentoring cultures that foster genuine inclusion regardless of what's politically expedient.

They'll create environments where:

• Employees from all backgrounds can find advocates and allies
• Different perspectives are sought out and valued
• Advancement opportunities are accessible to everyone with talent and drive
• Belonging emerges from real relationships, not corporate mandates
• Success is defined by outcomes, not compliance

These organizations won't need to defend their DEI programs because they won't have traditional DEI programs. They'll have something better: a culture where inclusion is woven into how people develop, advance, and succeed.

The Competitive Advantage of Authentic Inclusion

Time for the brutal honesty you know we're here for.

While many companies are running away from anything that looks like DEI, the fundamental challenges remain. You still need to retain talented employees from diverse backgrounds. You still need to build products and services for diverse markets. You still need innovation that comes from cognitive diversity. You still need leadership pipelines that reflect the talent available.

The companies that cower to shifting political sensibilities are the ones who will ultimately reap what they sow, and it won't be good fruit. Instead, the companies that can build genuinely inclusive cultures without triggering political backlash will have an enormous competitive advantage.

People are watching everything you do right now. Hypocrisy isn't so soon forgotten, and it's certainly not soon forgiven.

Mentoring is the vehicle for the inclusion advantage because it's:

• Politically defensible (who opposes career development?)
• Relationship-based (harder to attack than institutional programs)
• Opt-in (no one's being forced to participate)
• Outcome-focused (measured by growth, not identity)
• Scalable (can reach everyone in the organization)
• Authentic (builds real connections, not performative gestures)

The companies that master this approach over the next few years will emerge from the current political chaos with stronger cultures, more engaged workforces, and more resilient businesses. They'll have done the hard work of building inclusion into their DNA rather than bolting it on as a program.

Meanwhile, organizations that abandon inclusion entirely or wait for political clarity before acting will find themselves in crisis mode (many already are, in fact).

The biggest and probably most important thought I have on this topic is this:

Laws don't change hearts. Relationships do.

Banning or diminishing the value of DEI won't change how people feel about each other or create a more equitable and inclusive workplace. Creating a space and providing the structure for people to actually form cross-cultural relationships will.

Organizations must lean into the idea of creating cultures where inclusion isn't a program to be dismantled when politics shift. It's simply how people grow, learn, and succeed together.

That's the future. ERGs are a foundational support structure for change, but mentoring across individual employee networks is how you make inclusion an everyone culture.