Digiday Media’s Worklife reported on efforts to replace DEI with MEI—Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. In Adland, however, the acronym would stand for Monotone, Exclusivity, and Insular.
WTF is MEI? (and will it replace HR DEI efforts?)
By Hailey Mensik
Corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs are currently under fire, and some are trying to replace the term DEI with another acronym — “MEI” — which stands for merit, excellence and intelligence.
Elon Musk and Alexandr Wang, co-founder and CEO of Scale AI, have spoken out against DEI programs in favor of what they call “MEI” based hiring, which they describe as hiring based solely on one’s talent and ability to do the job well — often assessed by an impressive track record, or simply letting one’s accomplishments speak for themselves.
In a recent blog post, Wang wrote “we only hire the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart. We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than an individual.”
What’s wrong with MEI?
Workplace experts say merit-based hiring relies too heavily on one’s past accomplishments and formal professional experience than true skill, talent and ability to do a job well. “You’re kind of creating an environment where only certain types of people can get in the door. And that’s not really a fair assessment of talent,” said Neha Sampat, CEO of Contentstack.
The best organizations “look for the best talent for any job, but also recognize that that isn’t necessarily always from the same place. It’s not always from an Ivy League school. It’s not always from someone in Silicon Valley, it could be from someone completely overlooked by other employers,” Sampat said.
The MEI philosophy, HR and management experts said, has the potential to be harmful because it could create organizations with less diversity of thought, but also can add even more bias into hiring processes. DEI-based hiring “understands that there’s bias, not only unconscious bias, and merit assumes there is no bias, and that’s the biggest problem,” said Stuart McCalla, managing partner at Evolution, an executive coaching and leadership consulting firm.
“The problem I have with meritocracy is it assumes that humans can look at something objectively, and as a species, we cannot do that,” McCalla said.
McCalla points to studies on hiring bias displayed during resume reviews, often based on names and recruiters preferring applicants with more “european” sounding names, he said.
In a 2024 study, economists sent tens of thousands of fake job applications of candidates holding the same qualifications but with differing names to about 100 major global companies. Employers reached out to applicants they presumed to be White almost ten times more than those who they presumed to be Black, they found.
What’s right with it?
For companies really thinking about MEI, it should actually be tied to performance reviews and promotions rather than hiring, said Arnicia Arrington, evp of people operations and culture at EBONY media.
“MEI is great in terms of when you are trying to come up with your goals, your KPIs, your strategies and things like that,” Arrington said.
Some studies have found certain demographic groups are less likely to receive promotions despite equally — and sometimes even outperforming — others. For instance, a 2022 MIT study found women received higher performance ratings on average than men, but received 8% lower ratings when evaluated on their potential. As a result, female employees on average were 14% less likely to be promoted than their male colleagues.
Making promotions more merit based can ultimately help stem some of that bias and put more underrepresented groups in leadership roles. The idea behind meritocracy really is “to create equity, because anybody can, based on their efforts and their skill, get advancement within an organization. So based on how much work you’ve done, the quality of the work that you’ve done, and the people that have seen it,” McCalla said.
Will it really catch on?
Even given the current state of flux around DEI programs, MEI is unlikely to really catch on, experts say. But the debate over diversity in the workplace among those in HR is expected to continue, especially when it comes to changing language.
Earlier this summer the Society for Human Resources Management dropped the word “equity” from its “DEI” strategy — inciting widespread backlash on Linkedin among HR professionals. Many said they would cancel their SHRM memberships, rallying against the organization.
But some think the attention on this topic and increasing discussion is positive. “It’s creating a lot of debate and conversation, and in some ways, I welcome that debate and conversation. I think it’s healthy to talk about it,” Contentstack’s Sampat said.
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