Clarissa Moses is the Manager of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at JetBlue, where she partners across the airline to embed DEI strategy into business and talent management processes. She came up through communications, which shapes how she thinks about culture: as a story a company is constantly telling, whether or not anyone is paying attention to the script. Her core argument is that culture is the most defensible competitive advantage a company has, and most companies waste it.
On Reimagining Company Culture, Clarissa talked with host Lindsay Tjepkema about what it takes to make a company's culture genuinely different from a competitor's, especially in an industry like commercial aviation where compensation, schedule structures, and the basic shape of the job are largely interchangeable. The takeaways apply well beyond airlines.
Why Most Company Cultures Sound Identical
Open three random careers pages and you will find some combination of "we put people first," "we are passionate about our customers," and "we move fast and stay humble." None of those statements differentiate anything because every company says them. McKinsey's diversity and inclusion research found that 84 percent of C-suite leaders see a positive correlation between inclusion programs and employee attraction, but the same companies often describe their culture in language so generic that an employee could not pick it out of a lineup.
Clarissa's point is that culture differentiation is not a marketing problem, it is a specificity problem. JetBlue's culture is not "people-first" in the abstract, it is a specific set of behaviors (the way crewmembers handle a delay, the way managers run a debrief, the way the company decides which routes to add) that an employee at a competitor would notice immediately. The work of differentiation is making those specifics visible, repeatable, and consistent across every team.
What "Different" Actually Looks Like at JetBlue
How does an airline differentiate culture when the job is largely standardized?
By focusing on the spaces where the job is not standardized: how decisions get made, how mistakes get handled, how recognition gets distributed, and who gets pulled into the room when the stakes are high. Clarissa describes JetBlue's culture as visibly more participatory than peers in the same operating constraints, and that participation is what crewmembers point to when asked why they stay.
What role does DEI play in a culture differentiation strategy?
A central one. Deloitte's research on equitable workforce outcomes attributes 35 percent of an employee's emotional investment in their work and 20 percent of their desire to stay to feelings of inclusion. That is too much variance to leave to chance. At JetBlue, DEI is built into hiring rubrics, manager training, succession reviews, and the operational rituals that shape day-to-day work, not bolted on as a separate program.
What Actually Works for Building a Differentiated Culture
Name the behaviors, not the values
"Integrity" is a value. "We tell customers about an issue before they discover it themselves" is a behavior. Behaviors are what employees can practice, what managers can coach to, and what new hires can absorb in their first month. Clarissa's team translates JetBlue's stated values into a short list of observable behaviors per function, then trains managers to recognize them in real time. That is what makes organizational culture show up in the day rather than the handbook.
Build DEI into the operational fabric, not a separate track
The fastest way to make DEI feel performative is to run it as a parallel program to "the real business." Clarissa's preferred model is to embed diversity and inclusion work into the existing rituals (hiring committees, performance calibration, promotion reviews, after-action debriefs) so that nobody has to remember to "add the DEI piece." It is already in the meeting.
Recognize the behaviors you want to see more of
Most recognition programs reward outcomes, which is fine, but the highest-impact programs reward the behaviors that produce outcomes. Rewards and recognition tied to "how we did it" rather than only "what we hit" is one of the more reliable culture levers, especially for distributed or operational workforces. JetBlue uses peer-nominated recognition tied to its specific behavior list, which keeps the values from drifting into wallpaper.
Where Employee Relations Fits Into Culture Differentiation
A culture is only as differentiated as the experience employees actually have when something goes wrong. The careers page can promise psychological safety, but the experience an employee has when reporting a problem is what they will remember. AllVoices' work on employee relations is built on this premise: the way a company handles complaints, investigations, and follow-up is the most accurate reading of its actual culture.
How ER tooling reinforces culture
If employees do not have a credible channel to raise concerns and see them addressed, every other culture investment leaks. AllVoices' anonymous reporting and investigations management products give companies a way to close the loop visibly: an employee files a report, the right people see it, the response is documented, and the trends feed back into company culture work. The presence of that loop is what separates a stated culture from a lived one. AllVoices has helped companies like Sweetgreen turn their culture work into a measurable, two-way conversation rather than a one-way poster campaign.
Frequently Asked Questions About Differentiating Company Culture
What does it mean to differentiate company culture?
Differentiating company culture means defining and reinforcing the specific behaviors, decisions, and rituals that make working at your company feel materially different from working at a competitor. It is the opposite of generic values statements. The test is whether an employee at a peer company would immediately notice the difference on day one.
How does company culture affect retention?
Significantly. The Catalyst, McKinsey, and Deloitte research consistently shows that employees who feel their culture is authentic and inclusive are more likely to stay, more likely to recommend their employer, and more likely to perform at higher levels. Roughly 76 percent of employees say they are more likely to stay with an employer that supports DEI, and that number climbs to 86 percent for Gen Z.
What is the difference between culture and employee engagement?
Culture is the set of behaviors and norms a company practices. Employee engagement is one of the outcomes that culture produces. Strong culture tends to produce high engagement; weak culture produces low engagement regardless of how many engagement programs are layered on top.
Can a company change its culture intentionally?
Yes, but slowly. Culture changes when behaviors change, and behaviors change when leaders model new behaviors, recognition systems reward them, and feedback systems flag the old ones. Cultures rarely change through values posters or all-hands speeches alone.
How do you measure whether a culture is differentiated?
Run an exit interview question that asks "what was different here?" alongside an offer-acceptance question that asks "what made you choose us?" If the answers cluster around the same specific behaviors, your culture has a recognizable shape. If the answers are vague, you have work to do.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Clarissa's frame is that company culture is the only competitive advantage a company has that cannot be copy-pasted. Salaries can be matched, perks can be matched, even product features can be matched. The way your team handles a hard week, the way managers coach through a missed quarter, the way new hires get welcomed in their first month: those are uncopyable, and they are what make a company genuinely different to work at.
For HR leaders, the playbook is to stop trying to write a values statement that sounds different and start writing a behavior list that is different. Embed those behaviors into hiring, recognition, and management practices. Then build the listening and case-management infrastructure that lets you spot when the behaviors are slipping. Differentiation comes from consistency, not from creativity.
If you want to see how AllVoices supports culture work with listening, case management, and reporting tooling, book a tailored walkthrough with our team.
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