On a recent episode of Reimagining Company Culture, the conversation turned to starting DEI strategy from active listening rather than templated programs. The guest, Bryce Celotto, brought direct experience to the topic from their day-to-day work, and the conversation moved past the talking points most People teams have heard a hundred times. This recap pulls the practical thread of the discussion together and translates it into the workflows HR leaders are running today.
Bryce's background sets the context for how Bryce thinks about this work. Bryce J. Celotto is a Black/queer/transmasculine/ neurodivergent person who was born, and raised, in the Carolinas. He brings his lifelong experiences living at the intersections, and over a decade of professional expertise in policy, racial justice, LGBTQ equity and education to problemsolve from the grassroots to corporate board rooms. Over the last 11-years Bryce has used hi. That experience shapes the perspective the episode brings to starting DEI strategy from active listening rather than templated programs, and the recap below stays grounded in the workflows leaders are running, not abstractions.
The conversation touches on the basics any People team is already managing, including unconscious bias in the workplace and untapped talent pools. The recap below assumes that grounding and focuses on the operating moves leaders make on top of it.
Most of the framework below holds up across industries and company stages. The specifics vary; the underlying mechanics rarely do.
Why DEI strategy that skips listening usually fails
Most failed DEI programs share a starting point, a templated framework imported from outside the company without any listening on the inside. The pattern is consistent and avoidable. The programs that take months to build internal listening before launching anything tend to outlast the programs that ship templates in week two.
Bryce's approach as a JEDI strategist starts with listening for what the organization actually needs, not what the field is currently selling. Catalyst guidance on genuine inclusion policies guidance is consistent, genuine inclusion strategy is built on context, and context is something only listening produces.
How leaders work through starting DEI strategy from active listening rather than templated programs
How do you structure listening that informs strategy?
Three layers. Quantitative pulse data on a regular cadence. Qualitative focus groups segmented by identity and tenure. One-on-one interviews with leaders and frontline employees. Each layer produces a different kind of insight, and the layers correct each other when one of them gets noisy.
Strategy that lands on data from one layer alone tends to overfit. Strategy that triangulates across all three is more honest and more durable.
How do you avoid listening fatigue?
By acting on what you hear within sixty days. Listening without visible action burns out faster than no listening at all. Employees who feel heard once and ignored once will not show up the third time.
The discipline is the cycle: listen, decide, communicate, repeat. Skipping any step erodes the trust that makes the next listening cycle work.
What actually works in practice
The pattern across companies that handle starting DEI strategy from active listening rather than templated programs well comes down to three operational habits.
- Triangulate across qualitative and quantitative listening. Single-source listening overfits. Triangulation reveals durable patterns.
- Act within sixty days of every listening cycle. Action timing matters more than action size. Fast, small action beats slow, large action.
- Document the listening-to-action chain publicly. Visible chains build trust. Hidden chains generate cynicism.
None of these are aspirational. They are checklists the strongest People teams run on a cadence, and the consistency is what makes the difference.
What looks like a culture decision from the outside is usually the cumulative effect of those three habits, applied without theatrics.
This pattern shows up alongside familiar tools like workforce analysis fundamentals. The combination is what makes the operating model durable.
Where Employee Relations fits
AllVoices DEI solution programs need infrastructure for both listening and action. AllVoices employee survey tool provide the depth. AllVoices data and insights dashboard surfaces patterns. AllVoices HR case management platform captures the cases that pulse data alone would miss.
The companies pulling this off rarely run it on memory. They run it on infrastructure. AllVoices HR case management platform centralizes the case data; AllVoices data and insights dashboard surfaces the patterns nobody catches manually; AllVoices Vera AI co-pilot for ER teams accelerates the response time so the work is finishable. Together they cover the operating layer that this episode keeps pointing at.
How does ER feed DEI listening?
By making case data legible. The aggregated pattern of cases, what is being reported, by whom, in what teams, is one of the most underused listening datasets in most companies. AllVoices Vera AI co-pilot keeps the data clean enough to use.
The supporting research is consistent. Independent analysis from SHRM analysis of declining employee engagement points the same direction the episode does. The combination of operating discipline and outside data is what gets People leaders past the slogan stage.
The takeaway holds across companies of different sizes and industries. The teams that turn this episode's lesson into operating practice are the ones that name a target metric, run it on a cadence, and refuse to let activity stand in for outcomes. The metric does not have to be elaborate. It has to be visible to the people who can move it, and reviewed often enough that nothing falls off the radar for a quarter.
The other consistent pattern is that the work compounds. Year one of any of these practices feels like overhead. Year three is when the retention, engagement, and case-data signals start telling a clearly different story. People leaders who hold the line through the early part of the curve tend to be the ones who have the receipts when leadership asks for evidence later.
One more pattern worth naming: the People teams that scale this work fast share a common move. They put the operating habit on the same dashboard as the business metric it supports. Retention sits next to revenue. Case cycle time sits next to pipeline health. Engagement sits next to product velocity. The dashboards reinforce that this work is operations, not enrichment, and the cross-functional partners who see those side-by-side numbers stop questioning the spend within a quarter.
That dashboard discipline is also what survives leadership change. Whoever inherits the function inherits the dashboard, and the metrics keep reporting whether the new leader champions them or not. The work that lives only in personal commitment dies when the personal commitment moves on; the work that lives in shared operating systems keeps reporting itself.
Frequently Asked Questions About Starting Dei Strategy From Active Listening Rather Than Temp
How long should the listening phase last?
Most strategies need sixty to ninety days of structured listening before launching new programs. Shorter timelines tend to produce templates; longer timelines tend to produce fatigue.
Should listening cover senior leaders?
Yes. Senior leaders are often the last to hear the patterns visible to frontline employees, and skipping them produces strategies that do not hold up under leadership review.
Can external consultants run effective listening?
Selectively. External listening can produce honesty internal listening cannot. It also tends to feel transactional. The combination of internal and external listening usually outperforms either alone.
What's the right cadence for ongoing listening?
Annual deep dives, quarterly pulses, and continuous case data review. Each cadence catches different patterns; together they cover the field.
How do you handle resistance to listening from leadership?
Show them the cost of not listening, case patterns, attrition, exit interview themes. Most resistance is rooted in cost concerns that data resolves.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Bryce's eleven-plus years across DEI work converge on a deceptively simple finding. The strategies that work are the ones that started with listening and kept listening. The ones that failed shipped templates without context.
The work is in the listening, not in the framework.
See how AllVoices supports the kind of culture work this episode is about.
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