Bunny McKensie Mack runs MMG, a global research and change management firm that partners with organizations across tech, healthcare, government, and the nonprofit sector. Their work sits at the intersection of race, gender, class, disability, and LGBTQIA+ identity, and it is grounded in something most consulting firms shy away from: identifying and dismantling the systemic patterns that produce inequity inside otherwise well-intentioned companies.
On Reimagining Company Culture, McKensie laid out what it actually takes for an organization to commit to anti-oppression work. The short version: it is not a campaign, it is an operating model change, and most companies underestimate the depth of that commitment. This piece distills what HR leaders can take from McKensie's framing and apply inside their own organizations.
What "Anti-Oppression Work" Actually Means Inside a Company
Anti-oppression is not a synonym for diversity training. It is the active practice of identifying where company systems, policies, and norms produce unequal outcomes, and then changing those systems. McKensie's framing draws a hard line between awareness work, which describes the problem, and structural work, which changes the conditions that created the problem. Most corporate efforts stop at the first.
The cost of stopping there is significant. According to SHRM research, employee turnover driven by racial inequity has cost U.S. organizations roughly $172 billion over a five-year period, with one-third of Black employees reporting unfair treatment at work in the past year. That is not a culture survey problem; it is a balance sheet problem.
Why Most Corporate Equity Efforts Stall
McKensie has worked with enough organizations to see the same pattern repeat. A company commits publicly after a moment of crisis, hires a head of DEI, runs training, publishes a report, and then activity tapers as leadership attention moves on. The structures that produced inequity stay intact, and the people brought in to change them either burn out or leave.
What separates structural work from performative work?
Structural work changes who has decision rights, who controls budget, and how outcomes get measured. Performative work changes the messaging, the imagery, and the calendar of observances. McKensie's view is that performative work is not always cynical, but without structural counterparts it cannot move the needle on real outcomes like promotion velocity, pay equity, or retention by demographic group.
Why does middle management often become the bottleneck?
Senior leaders set the tone, but middle managers run the meetings, assign the work, and write the performance reviews. If those managers are not equipped, supported, and held accountable for inclusive behavior, the strategy stays trapped at the top of the org chart. Management training on equity has to be ongoing and tied to specific behavior expectations, not delivered once and forgotten.
What Actually Works in Anti-Oppression Practice
McKensie's approach is built on a few principles that consistently show up in organizations making real progress. None of them are quick.
Center the people closest to the harm
Decisions about equity programs are often made by leaders who have not personally experienced the inequities being addressed. McKensie argues that the people most affected need real decision authority, not just a seat at an advisory committee. That means changing who participates in policy design, who reviews investigation outcomes, and who shapes the metrics that define success.
Build accountability into the operating model
Equity outcomes need to live in the same dashboards as revenue and product metrics. That includes promotion rates, pay bands, and retention disaggregated by race, gender, and other identity dimensions, reviewed at the same cadence as financial performance. Harvard Business Review's framework on racial equity emphasizes that without measurable goals tied to leadership compensation, the work stays optional.
Invest in the long tail, not just the launch
Companies tend to over-invest in the announcement of an equity initiative and under-invest in the years of follow-through. McKensie's experience is that real change shows up in year three or four, after the executive sponsor has rotated, the news cycle has moved on, and the work has either been institutionalized or quietly defunded. The companies that institutionalize it tend to win.
Where Employee Relations Connects to Anti-Oppression Work
Anti-oppression work depends on hearing the truth from employees, especially when the truth is uncomfortable. That is the operational link between equity strategy and employee relations infrastructure. AllVoices supports this with a DEI solution that gives employees a structured way to surface concerns about discrimination, exclusion, or biased practices, and gives leaders the pattern data to act on it.
Why intake design matters for systemic concerns
A poorly designed intake system filters out the very signals leaders need to hear. Anonymous channels, multilingual access, and a clear handling process determine whether a concern about systemic discrimination reaches a decision-maker or dies in a manager's inbox. AllVoices' workplace discrimination hotline is built specifically for the kind of concerns that traditional HR processes tend to lose.
Frequently Asked Questions About Anti-Oppression Work
How is anti-oppression different from DEI?
DEI typically focuses on representation and inclusion within existing structures. Anti-oppression focuses on identifying and dismantling the structures themselves when they produce inequitable outcomes. The two overlap, but anti-oppression goes further into systems change.
What does a company need before starting this work?
Leadership commitment that survives a CEO transition, a budget that lasts beyond the first fiscal year, and a willingness to share decision authority with people directly affected by the issues. Without those, the effort stays cosmetic.
How do you measure progress on anti-oppression work?
Disaggregated data on hiring, promotion, pay, retention, and disciplinary outcomes by demographic group, reviewed quarterly. Qualitative data from pulse surveys, employee resource groups, and intake systems adds context. The combination of the two prevents either side from telling an incomplete story.
What role do white leaders play in anti-oppression work?
Significant. Senior leaders, regardless of identity, control resources and decisions. McKensie's framing is that ally work without structural action is identity, not contribution. The leaders who matter most are the ones who use their positional power to change policy, redirect budget, and hold peers accountable.
How long until a company sees real results?
Three to five years for measurable shifts in retention and promotion outcomes, longer for cultural patterns. The companies that report faster results often measure inputs (training completed, ERGs launched) rather than outcomes (representation, pay equity, retention by group), which can be misleading.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
McKensie Mack's work makes clear that anti-oppression is structural work, not communications work. It requires changing who decides, what gets measured, and how leaders are held accountable. None of that is easy, and none of it can be outsourced to a single training program or a single hire.
For HR leaders, the practical starting point is a clear-eyed audit of where current systems produce unequal outcomes, paired with a commitment to share decision authority with the people most affected. That includes building intake systems that hear systemic concerns, dashboards that surface disaggregated outcomes, and leadership accountability that survives the next executive transition. The work is multi-year by design, and the companies that treat it that way are the ones that show real results.
If your team is rebuilding how it surfaces and acts on equity concerns, AllVoices gives People leaders the intake and pattern data to keep the work grounded in real employee experience. Request a demo to see how integrated reporting supports anti-oppression and equity programs at scale.
.avif)
.avif)
.avif)