The vocabulary is shrinking.
The liability isn't.

In 2025, “DEI” fell 98% in Fortune 100 communications. Companies replaced it with softer phrases — “belonging,” “fairness,” “inclusive culture.” Then those started disappearing too. We wrote about that shift in our last post. What we didn't have space to say then is this: the words left. The obligations didn't.

While corporate language was getting quieter, the legal and regulatory environment was doing the opposite. The gap between what organisations say and what the law requires them to do has never been wider — or more expensive to ignore.

The numbers

The numbers that didn't get the memo

In the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recovered nearly $698 million for almost 21,000 workers in FY2024 — a record for the agency. The EEOC received 88,531 new discrimination charges that year, with retaliation claims accounting for nearly 50% of all filings. These figures were published in January 2025, just as DEI language was reaching its quietest point in corporate history.

In Australia, the positive duty introduced by the Respect@Work Act came into active enforcement in December 2023. Every employer, regardless of size, now carries a legal obligation to proactively eliminate discriminatory conduct — not simply respond to it after the fact. The Australian Human Rights Commission can initiate investigations without waiting for individual complaints.

In Europe, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is now in force. For large organisations operating in the EU, how they communicate — internally and externally — is a reportable governance metric. Inclusive communication is no longer a values statement. It is a disclosure obligation.

Three jurisdictions. Three different mechanisms. One direction: more scrutiny, not less.

The paper trail

The paper trail problem

Here is the argument most organisations haven't fully considered yet.

Inclusive language in workplace communications has always served two functions. The first is the obvious one: it signals to employees, candidates, and clients that certain people belong here. The second is less visible but legally more consequential: it documents intent.

Job descriptions written without gendered defaults, performance reviews that don't assume a particular kind of body or cognitive style, internal policies that don't inadvertently signal who the “real” employees are — these create a paper trail. They show that an organisation was actively thinking about discrimination, not passively hoping to avoid it.

When organisations strip that language in response to political pressure, they don't reduce their legal exposure. In many cases, they increase it. They've removed the evidence that they were trying to meet obligations they still legally hold.

The organisations that stripped inclusive language in 2025 didn't reduce their exposure. They removed the evidence that they were trying to meet obligations they still legally hold.

ISO 45003:2021, the international standard for psychological health and safety at work, classifies exclusionary communication as a psychosocial hazard. If your communications carry that hazard and your documentation no longer shows any attempt to address it, you haven't made yourself less visible to regulators. You've made yourself more vulnerable to them.

Disability & the workplace

When the safety net shrinks, the workplace carries more weight

There is a dimension to this conversation that hasn't received enough attention in boardrooms — particularly in Australia.

The 2025–26 Federal Budget projects $954 million less spent on the National Disability Insurance Scheme next year than previously forecast, and $3.9 billion less over the next five years. The government introduced new NDIS legislation in May 2026, tightening eligibility criteria and restructuring how support needs are assessed. Thousands of people with disability are facing reduced or removed funding.

What this means, practically, is that the workplace is becoming a more critical site of inclusion for people with disability — not less. When government-funded support contracts, the quality of a person's working environment, and how that environment communicates with and about them, carries greater weight in their daily life.

The organisations that understand this aren't treating disability inclusion as a compliance checkbox or a DEI programme. They're treating it as a fundamental question of how they write — job ads, internal policies, manager communications, client-facing documents. The language in those documents either signals that a person with disability belongs here, or it doesn't. There is no neutral position.

What this looks like

What quiet inclusion actually looks like

Some organisations have quietly found a third path — neither performative DEI signalling nor stripped-back silence. They've moved inclusion from the programme level to the process level. No banners. No statements. Just communications that are reviewed for dignity and tone before they go out, job ads that don't assume a default employee, performance frameworks that don't mistake communication style for capability.

This approach is harder to attack politically because it doesn't announce itself. And it is harder to litigate against because it is consistent. It shows up in every document, not just the ones written in response to a complaint.

This is where inclusion lives when it is working — not in the statement, but in the sentence.

In practice

One document at a time

Every person who drafts a job ad, writes a performance review, or sends a company-wide communication is making a legal and cultural decision — whether they know it or not. The organisations that understand this aren't doing inclusion as a programme with a budget line and a reporting cycle. They're doing it as a practice, embedded in the work of writing itself.

The words your organisation uses aren't just a reflection of your culture. In 2026, they're evidence of it.