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Bernard Coleman III, Chief Diversity and Engagement Officer, and Yolanda Stanton, Senior Diversity Business Partner at Gusto, joined Reimagining Company Culture to talk about RISE, the company's strategy focused on representation, inclusion, social impact, and equity. RISE is documented publicly through an annual report that lays out goals, progress, and gaps.
The conversation kept circling back to one theme. Continuous transparency is not a marketing exercise. It is a working contract with employees, candidates, and customers that requires leadership to share progress even when the news is uncomfortable. The companies that hold that contract build trust that compounds. The ones that drift produce skepticism that compounds even faster.
Why Continuous Transparency Outperforms Annual Reporting
Most DEI reporting is annual, glossy, and disconnected from operational decisions. That cadence is too slow to be useful and too polished to be credible. Catalyst research on champion companies for change found that the strongest programs sustain or increase momentum specifically through ongoing engagement rather than periodic reports.
Bernard and Yolanda described how Gusto's RISE strategy operates on a continuous cadence. Goals are reviewed quarterly. Data is reviewed monthly. The annual report is the artifact, not the strategy. That posture is what lets the team adjust before a quarter goes sideways instead of after.
Their framing is that diversity work is too important to be left to once-a-year reflection. The companies that publish progress in real time build the muscle of honest internal accountability, which is what lets external transparency feel grounded rather than performative.
What also matters is the willingness to publish disappointing numbers. Gusto's RISE report names where progress fell short. That honesty is part of why the report is credible. Companies that only publish the good news end up with reports that nobody trusts, including their own employees.
How Do You Build a Real Continuous Transparency Program?
What should leaders share in real time, and what should they hold for the annual report?
Yolanda's answer is to share methodology and progress continuously, while reserving deep analysis and full numbers for the annual cadence. Quarterly check-ins should give employees a clear view of whether the work is on track, even if the granular data takes longer to prepare. The principle is that transparency is about trust, and trust requires consistent signal, not just polished documents.
How do you handle pushback from leaders who worry about exposing gaps?
Bernard described the conversation as a shift in framing. Hiding gaps does not make them go away. It just shifts the cost from leadership to employees who already know the gap exists. Pew Research on workplace DEI shows that 61 percent of workers say their company has policies that ensure fairness, but smaller shares see those policies actually enforced. Closing that gap requires owning it.
What Actually Works in Transparent DEI Programs
Tie transparency to operational decisions
Reports that do not change anything operationally lose credibility quickly. Strong programs explicitly link DEI data to hiring decisions, performance review calibrations, and promotion criteria. The data has to do work, not just live in a dashboard.
Publish methodology, not just outcomes
Numbers without methodology look like spin. Strong reports walk readers through how the data was collected, what was excluded, and what limitations apply. That depth is what separates credible reporting from performative reporting.
Build the feedback loop with employees
Continuous transparency works when employees can react to what they read. Town halls with real Q&A, internal forums, and employee resource group consultations all help close that loop. Reports that come down from leadership without invitation for response stop landing within a year.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Transparent DEI work depends on ER systems that handle equity concerns reliably. AllVoices' DEI solution and our DEI hotline give HR a single place to surface concerns, track resolution, and feed insight back into the broader transparency program.
How does ER tooling support continuous transparency?
It produces the trend data that DEI reports depend on. Without case-level visibility, transparency claims rest on aggregate hiring and retention numbers alone. With it, reports can speak honestly about how concerns are surfaced, how they are handled, and what patterns are emerging across teams.
Frequently Asked Questions About Continuous Transparency in DEI
What is continuous transparency?
It is the practice of sharing progress on goals like DEI on a regular, ongoing basis rather than only through annual reports. It includes monthly data reviews, quarterly check-ins, and real-time updates on hiring and retention trends.
Why do most DEI reports lose credibility?
Because they often only publish the good news, lack methodology detail, and disconnect from operational decisions. Reports that read like marketing collateral get filed away by employees who know what is actually happening on the ground.
What metrics belong in a transparent DEI program?
Representation by level, hiring rates by demographic, promotion rates, voluntary attrition, manager-level engagement scores, pay equity audits, and the volume and resolution of concerns raised through ER systems.
How do you handle confidentiality in transparent reporting?
By aggregating data carefully, suppressing small cells that could identify individuals, and being explicit about what is and is not shared. Transparency does not mean revealing everything. It means being honest about what is and is not visible and why.
How does transparency affect retention?
Transparency, paired with action, improves retention because it builds trust. Transparency without action erodes retention faster than silence would. The action piece is what turns the report into a credible commitment.
Who should own DEI transparency reporting?
Strong programs are co-owned by HR, communications, and senior leadership. HR runs the data. Communications shapes the narrative honestly. Senior leadership signs the report and stands behind the numbers in front of employees.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Bernard and Yolanda's view of transparency is grounded in the operational reality of running a DEI program at scale. Continuous transparency is not a communications tactic. It is a discipline that requires honest measurement, real conversations with employees, and a willingness to publish progress even when it is uneven.
The companies that build this discipline share a posture. They tie data to decisions. They publish methodology, not just outcomes. They invite response. And they treat the annual report as a snapshot of work that has been ongoing all year, not as the moment of accountability.
Programs that handle continuous transparency well also tend to recruit better. Candidates research reports before interviews. Honest reporting attracts the talent that wants to do this work. Glossy reporting attracts skeptics who eventually leave.
Across the conversation, the throughline was that transparency is a discipline, not a campaign. The teams that hold the discipline through hard quarters end up with cultures employees actually trust, which is the foundation every other DEI program needs to stand on.
Programs that hold this discipline also tend to attract executive sponsorship more easily over time. CFOs and General Counsels who see steady, honest reporting find it easier to defend the work in budget conversations and risk reviews. Transparency, paired with action, becomes a financial argument as much as a people argument.
That financial framing matters because it makes transparency programs durable through executive transitions. New CFOs and CEOs are far less likely to pause work that is producing measurable risk reduction and recruiting outcomes than they are to pause work positioned only as a values exercise.
See how AllVoices supports HR teams running transparent DEI programs.
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