How to Actively Practice Inclusive Meetings & Onboard New Hires in a Remote World

Dr. Shindale Seale on building inclusive remote workplaces

Dr. Shindale Seale is the CEO and founder of SEADE Consulting, a cultural equity and diversity strategy firm. She is also the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Program Chair at the University of California Santa Cruz Silicon Valley Extension and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Redlands. Her work centers on helping organizations move past performative inclusion toward structural equity.

AllVoices spoke with Dr. Seale in early 2021 about how people managers can build genuinely inclusive remote workplaces and what separates organizations that make real DEI progress from those that only perform it. The fundamentals she describes have grown more urgent, not less, in the years since: 82% of employees now say they value onboarding that emphasizes cultural inclusivity, and companies that integrate DEI into their onboarding see 35% higher employee retention.

What is the vision behind SEADE Consulting?

SEADE was born from the vision of academic and professional environments that embrace, value, and empower diverse people equitably. It's a vision that stems from the experiences I have had, as have many other people from underrepresented groups, of being the only one of us in classrooms or organizations where the instructors and leadership had no idea what to do with us to help us succeed. It comes from us enduring bias, microaggression, and sometimes flagrant discrimination masked as meritocracy, and this thwarted so many of our trajectories. SEADE seeks to combat all of that by providing a unique blend of intense historical and foundational instruction in the origins of discrimination in all forms, while using research to craft best practices for mitigating discrimination.

SEADE's approach reflects a deeper truth about DEI work: structural inequity does not dissolve through good intentions. It requires organizations to understand where discrimination comes from historically, trace how it persists in their own policies, and then change those policies deliberately. The foundation here is historical context, not just a workshop.

How can companies practice inclusivity on platforms like Zoom and Slack?

On a platform like Slack, it's important to set company guidelines ahead of time so no one is caught off guard or surprised that their off-color comment is being reported to HR. Additionally, Slack and Google Hangouts should be monitored for conversation that borders bullying, discrimination, or even cues for people who may be experiencing unchecked stress. Zoom is a whole other situation that is driven almost entirely by the meeting initiators. So to practice inclusivity, I always encourage my clients to consider the frequency and length of meetings, the times of day that they are planning to meet, providing an agenda ahead of time, and truly considering if the meeting is mandatory. When you're in the meeting there are several strategies leaders can use, like engaging the participants early through a quick one-word weather report or something that gets everyone participating. I always suggest asking junior members or people from underrepresented groups for their thoughts first and holding space for them to be creative and out of the box and innovate. This goes a long way in creating inclusivity through building a psychologically safe environment.

Dr. Seale's point about who you ask first in a meeting is deceptively simple and structurally significant. When senior or dominant voices speak first, they set the frame for everyone who follows. Asking junior or underrepresented team members first does not just include them: it changes the information the whole meeting works from. See the research on building a psychologically safe environment for the broader evidence base behind this approach.

What challenges do employers need to address when work and home life overlap?

It's almost an afterthought that some peoples' homes are not ready for prime time. Some people have kids that they're homeschooling during the meeting. Others have roommates competing for wifi and space. And then there are some who have offensive artifacts and décor prominently displayed in their virtual environment. Some companies require that participants on virtual on-camera calls activate a virtual background, with the company's logo or a preferred background. This provides privacy and reduces the opportunity for excluding others. One benefit that is being utilized much more now and should be expanded is mental health offerings. There's social unrest that people are handling vastly differently, and all of these elements can negatively impact workers' productivity.

The equity dimension of remote work is easy to overlook. Not everyone has a quiet room, reliable internet, or a home environment that translates well on camera. Mandating cameras without addressing these realities creates a visible hierarchy between employees with comfortable home setups and those without. Mental health support, virtual background policies, and internet reimbursement are not perks: they are equity practices.

What is the difference between performative DEI and actual progress?

There are so many layers to this. Performative simply means that the company is doing this as a means of appearing woke or allied with a particular community while not doing what is necessary to advance the cause they are verbally championing. For example, this summer Black Lives Matter was huge. Everybody put up their banners and companies far and wide posted their commitments to doing better. Then, well, they didn't follow through. Others because it really isn't a priority and frankly never had been, and many leaders don't believe there's any ROI in it. Actual progress is when organizations are soberly investigating the systemic and structural inequities that have marginalized BIPOC, women, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ members, older workers, and other groups. And the companies delve into their company assets: their policies, procedures, handbooks, marketing, pay structures, even the spatial environment, and be intentional about eradicating the inequities that prevent their workforce from succeeding.

The distinction Dr. Seale draws cuts directly to the structural problem: performative DEI looks identical to real DEI from the outside, which is why companies can post commitments without ever being held accountable for following through. Real progress requires auditing the things that do not get shared publicly: pay data, promotion rates, turnover by demographic, policy language that has not been reviewed in a decade. The connection between DEI and employee experience becomes visible in that data, not in the commitments posted publicly.

What tactics have you seen work well in corporate racial justice strategies?

Racial justice strategies can be tricky. The PGA did one that I liked. They wanted to attract more Blacks in their corporate space. They actually went into the communities and surveyed to determine what the barriers were. It was interesting what they found, and it was not at all what they thought they would. The PGA thought it was that Blacks weren't interested, but in fact there was a great deal of interest, just a lack of information and access to the entry point. So the PGA got to working on that and created more resources and access, and now the program is going well. When companies consider racial justice strategies, it is vital to hear the voices of those you're trying to help. You don't want to be the savior riding in telling people what they need. You want to give them voice and agency, empowering them to determine their destiny, and then the organization provides the resources for that to happen.

Start with the community, not with your assumptions about what the community needs. The PGA example works because they went out and asked before designing anything. Most organizations do the reverse: design a program based on internal assumptions, then wonder why participation is low. Equity initiatives built from the outside in tend to address the actual barriers instead of the imagined ones.

How can HR ensure new remote hires feel welcomed and included from day one?

When possible, HR and People Teams should curate separate events to celebrate the arrival of the new employee. Onboarding is one thing: that's kind of a requirement. But the new employee's department should plan a virtual welcome party funded by the company where the new hire can meet everyone virtually, while having an opportunity to tell everyone about themselves, if they choose, and have team members talk about themselves too. As far as equity in the workforce, learning about the new hires' work styles, their meeting time preferences, their identity: regardless of how they are perceived, a person may identify very differently, get those pronouns straight and honor them. I think it's a really good practice to be more member-focused than leader-focused. And this means allowing for variance of experience and preference and working to accommodate.

The member-focused orientation Dr. Seale describes runs counter to most onboarding processes, which are designed for the convenience of the organization, not for the needs of the person being onboarded. A new hire who is asked how they work best, what their preferences are, and what support they need before they ask for it arrives with a fundamentally different experience of belonging than one who sits through a four-hour orientation and receives a laptop. For more on building this from the ground up, see the guide on employee engagement survey questions that surface what new hires actually need.

What advice do you have for individual contributors welcoming a new remote teammate?

One of the most endearing acts is when someone who doesn't have to reaches out and just says: hey, I see you've just joined us. I'm not on your team but I just wanted to say welcome and feel free to reach out if you ever need anything. Can you imagine how safe you've just made that person feel? Another thing is to invite them to a virtual coffee to connect and get to know each other. Individual contributors have sometimes broader perspectives than members of specific teams, and their reach can be even more robust: this is quite valuable to someone learning to navigate new terrain.

The welcome message from someone outside the new hire's team is often more memorable than anything in the formal onboarding program. It signals that the culture of welcome is real, not just a stated value. Individual contributors are often underestimated as cultural infrastructure. They are the ones who make the day-to-day environment feel safe or isolating for someone new.

What keeps you motivated to do this work?

I honestly want to see a world where historically marginalized people can enter classrooms and corporate spaces and be valued and empowered for who they are and what they bring. That's the driving force, but it can be very taxing because those same issues that motivate me are the same issues I face. Part of the knowledge is understanding how to create that psychological safety that creates an environment where people will actually listen, regardless of if they agree. At least we can hear each other, and that is the start of respect, which hopefully can lead to the impact we seek.

The emotional labor Dr. Seale names is rarely accounted for in DEI work. The people doing the most effective equity work are often also the people most personally affected by the inequities being addressed. Organizations serious about this work need to think about how to support the people carrying it. A culture of listening that extends to the people doing the listening is not just ethical: it is how you retain the practitioners who make the work real.

Where inclusive remote meetings and onboarding stand in 2025 and 2026

Dr. Seale's interview was conducted at the height of the forced-remote experiment. Five years later, the research has caught up to what she described from experience.

DEI-focused onboarding is now a measurable retention driver

According to Thirst's 2025 onboarding research, organizations with DEI-integrated onboarding programs see 35% higher employee retention than those without, and diverse hires who experience inclusive onboarding are 70% more likely to report feeling welcomed in their roles. Companies with structured onboarding overall see 60% higher first-year engagement. The data now supports what Dr. Seale argued in 2021: how you bring someone into the organization shapes whether they stay and whether they contribute fully. For HR teams building onboarding programs, see how strengthening the HR-manager relationship creates the day-to-day accountability that makes onboarding intentions real. See how AllVoices helps HR teams create the reporting infrastructure that makes employee experience visible, not assumed.