When we sat down with Jessie Spellman, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Walmart, for this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, the conversation cut closer to the bone than most DEI conversations do. Jessie has dedicated her career to advocating for marginalized and disenfranchised communities, and her argument was that real DEI work requires a willingness to disrupt the default systems and standards most organizations have absorbed without examining them. Anti-racism is not a campaign. It is a daily practice that managers either accept as part of their job or quietly opt out of.
Her broader case was that integrity and a learning mindset are the two characteristics that separate leaders who actually move the work from leaders who only talk about it. Integrity is the willingness to act on what the data shows even when it is uncomfortable. A learning mindset is the recognition that no one arrives fully formed and that the work requires ongoing curiosity about what is and is not working.
Why Disrupting Default Systems Matters More Than Adding Programs
Most equity work focuses on adding programs to existing systems. Jessie argued that the bigger move is examining the default systems the company runs on and asking who they were designed for. SHRM research has documented that performance management, promotion criteria, and feedback norms often quietly favor the dominant group, even when the company invests heavily in inclusion programming on top of those systems.
Disruption requires looking at the systems themselves. The promotion criteria that reward visibility over impact. The feedback norms that penalize the same behaviors when they come from underrepresented employees. The performance reviews that treat speaking up as a leadership trait for some employees and a problem for others. Catalyst has studied these patterns for decades. The companies that read the research and act on it are the ones moving the experience of work for the people the programs are meant to serve.
What Holding Managers Accountable to Anti-Racism Looks Like
What does anti-racism practice mean for a manager?
Anti-racism practice for a manager includes paying explicit attention to who is succeeding and struggling on their team, examining their own feedback patterns for differential treatment, and intervening when patterns of inequity show up in their team's data. It is operational rather than aspirational. The manager either does the practice or does not.
How do you hold managers accountable in practice?
Useful mechanisms include team-level dashboards on representation, retention, and promotion data; explicit equity goals in performance reviews; calibration sessions that surface differential outcomes; and consequences when patterns persist without intervention. Data and insights tooling that gives managers visibility into their own team's outcomes is where the accountability becomes real.
What Actually Works When You Build a Learning Culture Around Equity
Principle 1: Make the data visible without weaponizing it
Visibility creates accountability. Strong programs publish team-level dashboards that show every leader how they are doing relative to peers. The intent is improvement, not punishment, and the framing matters. Programs that lead with shame produce defensive behavior. Programs that lead with curiosity produce learning.
Principle 2: Build feedback rituals that surface different experiences
Standard engagement surveys often miss what underrepresented employees experience. Strong programs add focus groups, listening sessions designed for specific identity groups, and confidential reporting channels through tools like anonymous reporting. The combination produces a richer picture than any single survey can.
Principle 3: Reward leaders who do the work
The leaders who put in the time to examine their patterns, change their behavior, and improve their team's outcomes deserve recognition. That recognition is also a signal to the rest of the organization that the work is valued and rewarded. Employees who see leaders rewarded for equity progress understand the practice is part of the operating model rather than a side project. Companies that make these rewards visible see the rest of the leadership team engage more seriously with their own equity work. Companies that make equity progress visible in performance reviews and promotion decisions signal what the organization actually values. Rewards and recognition programs that explicitly celebrate equity progress reinforce the practice for the rest of the organization.
Where Employee Relations Fits Into Anti-Racism Practice
Equity goals require operational follow-through when patterns surface in the data. Employee relations is the function that translates patterns into specific interventions. Without ER, the data shows the gap and nothing changes. With ER, the gap produces a coaching conversation, a calibration session, or a structural change in the affected team.
How ER turns equity data into action
The right ER function pairs case data with pattern data. The pattern shows attrition concentrated in one group. The cases show why. Together they let leaders intervene at the manager level or the system level depending on what the data reveals. DEI programs that operate without ER are running half the operating system.
How Measurement Drives Real Equity Progress
What metrics matter most
Useful equity metrics include representation by level, voluntary attrition gaps, promotion velocity by demographic group, pay equity audit results, and inclusion sentiment scores by team. Together they describe whether the system is producing equitable outcomes.
How to avoid measurement theater
Measurement is theater when it produces dashboards and no decisions. Strong programs tie every metric to a specific decision. Promotion data feeds into calibration. Attrition gaps feed into manager coaching. Pay equity findings feed into compensation decisions. Without that link, the measurement loses credibility.
Frequently Asked Questions About Equity, Integrity, and a Learning Mindset
What is anti-racism practice at work?
Anti-racism practice is the ongoing work of examining systems, behaviors, and outcomes for racial inequity and acting to close gaps where they appear. It is structural and behavioral, not just rhetorical.
How does inclusion differ from equity?
Inclusion describes the felt experience of being valued and heard. Equity describes the outcomes the system produces. Both matter. Companies that focus on inclusion alone often see good engagement scores alongside continuing inequity in promotion and attrition.
How do you measure DEI progress over time?
Useful approaches track progress against the company's own historical baseline rather than against external benchmarks. Year-over-year movement in representation, attrition, and promotion velocity tells the truer story. External benchmarks are useful for context but not for setting goals.
What is a learning mindset in equity work?
A learning mindset is the recognition that the work is ongoing and that no leader arrives fully equipped. It includes seeking feedback, examining one's own patterns, and remaining curious about what the data and lived experience are revealing.
How does unconscious bias show up in default systems?
Unconscious bias shows up in feedback patterns, promotion criteria, performance norms, and recognition practices. Each individual decision can look fair while the cumulative outcomes are not. Strong programs audit the systems for cumulative effect, not just individual decisions.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Jessie Spellman's argument is one HR leaders should keep in mind when the equity conversation starts to feel performative. Real progress requires disrupting the default systems and standards, holding managers accountable for the practice, and rewarding the leaders who do the work. Each move is operational and measurable. Together they produce the kind of progress employees can see.
HR leaders who want their equity work to actually move outcomes should invest in three things. Audit the default systems for cumulative inequity. Hold managers accountable to anti-racism practice with team-level data and clear consequences. Wire in listening and employee relations infrastructure that turns data into intervention. With those in place, DEI moves from a campaign into a discipline.
See how AllVoices supports the listening and ER systems behind durable equity progress.
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