40-day Target boycott begins after DEI rollbacks; Boeing CEO claims culture shift will be ’brutal‘ for leaders

Greetings, comms pros! Let’s take a look at a few stories from the past week and see what we can learn from them.

1. Target consumer boycott begins after company moves away from DEI initiatives

Two months after Target announced rollbacks to its DEI work, a pastor from the Atlanta area is leading a boycott of the popular retailer.

According to CNN:

“We’re asking people to divest from Target because they have turned their back on our community,” Rev. Jamal Bryant, a prominent Atlanta-area megachurch pastor who started the boycott, said in an interview with CNN.

The boycott, which begins during the start of Lent, comes more than a month after Target made changes to its DEI programs and at a difficult period for the company as it faces an onslaught of tariffs in the middle of a challenging economy.

Target declined to comment on the strike, but it did reaffirm its commitment to inclusivity and pointed to items from minority and black-owned businesses in its stores.

Target’s response and nod to its other inclusivity measures isn’t new. Just look at McDonald’s earlier this year for a comparison. But when the issue begins impacting the business, comms pros need to take note and figure out how to talk about it with their all stakeholders, including employees.

In a piece for Ragan this February, founder and CEO of Minerva’s Legacy Coaching and Consulting Dani Veira provided some tips for talking about DEI rollbacks internally:

• Get your leaders involved with discussions from the start. Have leadership explain clearly why the changes are happening and what they mean for company culture and current employees in a practical, detailed fashion.
• Framing is important. Veira recommended communicators frame these DEI shifts as an adjustment of priorities to a different sort of inclusion, not a loss.
• Use your existing culture as a guide in talking about the new state of DEI. Your mission and values should always form the basis of any change comms.
• Trust is the rock upon which every piece of internal communication is built. This is especially true when it comes to DEI work, which recognizes the fundamental identities of employees. Consider working with ERGs to nail your tone and cadence of communication to embolden trust. This can look take the form of listening sessions with ERG representatives to learn about their perspectives and determine how it can inform your messaging and how you can share potential learnings with leadership.

2. Boeing CEO says the company needs to shift away from insular culture in all-hands meeting

Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg told employees that the company needs to work toward a more collaborative culture and that the results of a company survey of employees might not be easy for leadership to stomach. The survey was notably taken by 82% of employees, marking a high level of engagement.

According to Reuters, during an all-hands meeting in St. Louis, Ortberg emphasized the need for employees to work in concert to solve the problems facing the organization. “The power of the Boeing Company is in us all kind of rowing the boat together,” he said. He added that Boeing has an employee group in place to study the company’s culture and employee behaviors and that it’ll work with the results of the February 2025 survey that Ortberg called out to work on improving the company’s overall culture.

“I want to hear what the employees have to say,” Ortberg said. “And what we’ll do is we’re going to put an action plan on those things, and I think they’re going to be brutal to leadership, quite frankly.”

In addition, Ortberg also decried that amid the company’s struggles over the last year-plus, lower-level employees and managers have shouldered the blame for major incidents and blowback. He claimed that employees at the company needed to communicate more civilly as a larger part of his desired culture shift. Ortberg said these cultural fixes were key to the larger problems plaguing Boeing.

For a company that’s dealt with as much turmoil as Boeing over the last few years, it’s easy to say that cultural change is needed. But it’s another to work on modeling that change and putting it into action from the top levels of leadership. Sure, Boeing has a long way to go to make the collaborative changes to make the differences Ortberg needs — but putting the right people and processes in place is a start.

3. Sesame Workshop announces major job cuts

In a memo to staffers, Sesame Workshop CEO Sherrie Westin shared that the studio needed to “downsize significantly.” This comes just one day after employees at the organization voted to unionize.

Just one day after unionizing, Sesame Workshop’s CEO announced layoffs, per a note to staff shared with me https://t.co/2sLyC0HC9h pic.twitter.com/iICVm4tDG5

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) March 5, 2025

According to a report by NPR, the decision was made because of the “current media landscape.”

Sesame Workshop said the layoffs “are necessary to ensure that the Workshop is poised to continue to deliver on its mission for years to come but that does not make the human impact of these reductions any less painful.”

There are two parts of this to unpack from a comms perspective. The first is the layoff announcement itself. Westin’s words are empathetic, clear and address the budget gap as a primary reason for the move. She was also sure to outline the next steps for impacted people. Those are good hallmarks of leadership in layoff communication and are admirable.

The second part is the union comms angle. Laying off a large chunk of your employee base immediately after a unionization effort might just be a business move, but there is a good chance employees think otherwise.

Union communications are a careful dance and you need to be careful in what you do and don’t say in critical moments. The best union comms are measured and deliberate — they consider worker rights, cultural touchstones for communication and the impact of leader visibility simultaneously. While the union hadn’t responded to the layoff news at publication time, it did release its own statement supporting its members and how that aligns with the messaging of the program the Sesame Workshop is famous for.

“Sesame Street has taught generations the importance of kindness, fairness, and standing up for what’s right,” said Phoebe Gilpin, Senior Director of Formal Learning. “As the dedicated staff behind this beloved show and so much more, we believe Sesame Workshop should embody those same values by ensuring all workers have a voice in the decisions that affect us. By coming together, we believe we can build a stronger, more supportive workplace that embodies the crucial lessons we teach the world’s children every day.”

It’s important to balance your approach to union comms with both knowledge of where the labor situation is and your organization’s voice. A deft and well-considered communications touch is a must.

4. How about some good news?

• Drone footage captured narwhals using their tusks to explore and play.
• The Galapagos rail was rediscovered after nearly 200 years.
• Equipped with a tiny helmet, a cat went parachute skiing with its owner.
• Ragan Training is great for communications pros to find inspiration and resources.
• You should be rewarded for your work. Find out how to earn an award here!

Have a great weekend comms all-stars!

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and trivia.