Brazilian companies have been increasingly investing in initiatives focused on employee well-being. However, a survey by Diversitera – specialized in management research with an emphasis on Diversity and Inclusion – reveals a concerning misalignment between institutional discourse and power structures within organizations.
Conducted between June 2022 and March 2025, the study analyzed over 70 companies across 17 sectors.The findings show that top leadership in the formal labor market remains homogeneous and still distant from Brazil’s plurality, often diverging from the expected proportionality regarding the country’s demographics, as demonstrated by the data below:
- Only 1.5% of executive director and managerial positions are held by people with disabilities (IBGE: 8.9% PwD in Brazil);
- Women occupy 35% of these positions (IBGE: 51.5% women in Brazil);
- Black individuals represent 9.7% of top leadership (IBGE: 55.5% Black population in Brazil).
According to experts, these figures aren’t just an alarm about representation and representativeness, but also indicate structural risks that may compromise companies’ very ability to listen, innovate, and retain talent.
“There is no employee experience without real representation in decision-making”, states Jaime Almeida, DEI director at ABRH-SP. “Homogeneous leadership may fail to understand the scale of challenges faced by marginalized groups. This directly affects organizational climate, mental health indicators, and consequently, business performance.”
Mental health concerns
This realization comes at a time when emotional exhaustion and burnout have become common phenomena in corporate environments, especially among underrepresented professionals. Other studies indicate that structural exclusion is directly related to loss of engagement, high turnover, and difficulty in developing psychologically safe environments.
Despite increased investment in mental health programs, experts emphasize there can be no sustainable well-being without profound transformation in leadership structures.
“Employee Experience needs to be redesigned through lenses of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Otherwise, it will remain a privilege for few”, adds Jaime Almeida. “If leaders don’t develop awareness through listening, don’t represent and don’t recognize different trajectories, they’ll hardly build a culture of real belonging.”
For Diversitera, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) cannot be peripheral or cosmetic initiatives to business strategy, when in reality they are values that permeate daily management tools. In an increasingly demanding market – with consumers, investors, suppliers, and talent demanding coherence and commitment – companies that don’t rethink their leadership risk becoming irrelevant.
