I'm a Director of Learning & Development. I can promise you 1 of 3 things is driving this initiative:
1. Your overall employee engagement and satisfaction is low. Morale has taken a nose dive, especially at the individual contributor level. Employees are complaining to HR and leaders about a lot of things, including a lack of diversity, usually at the top. Therefore the company is trying to appease the noisy minority (no pun intended.) But in my experience, the people who bitch about lack of diversity will bitch about everything and they are never happy. I've found they usually suck at their jobs as well.
2. Your company is potentially seeking new business, and that potential massive client is wanting your company to show cause about your DEI and fairness in hiring initiatives. Only a handful of people in your org will really know if this the case, and they aren't going to share with you that the motivation is bull shit. Therefore, you and many of your peers are just there for show. And that sucks, but it might pay off in the long run.
3. Or some Executive just has a hard on for this type of stuff and wants to add it to their resume. I've seen a lot of resumes for potential Senior Leaders and C Suite candidates. If someone built and lead a DEI initiative, it’s usually the first thing that shows up at the top of their resume.