Tarsha McCormick, Vice President, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Engagement at WP Engine - Aligning Values and DEI Initiative

On the AllVoices Reimagining Company Culture podcast, we sat down with Tarsha McCormick, Vice President, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Engagement at WP Engine, to dig into aligning company values with DEI strategy. Tarsha McCormick (she/her) is VP of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Culture and Engagement at WP Engine. She is responsible for setting the strategic vision and accelerating WP Engine's DEI maturity.

The conversation moves past the usual talking points. Instead of treating dei strategy as an HR theme, Tarsha McCormick treats it as an operational discipline that sits in the daily decisions managers make about people, priorities, and trust. Below, the takeaways HR leaders, employee relations specialists, and executive teams will find most useful.

The discussion below pulls on several threads from the episode and connects them to current research and what AllVoices sees across hundreds of People teams.

What DEI Strategy Looks Like in Practice

DEI Strategy is one of those words HR teams use freely, but the on-the-ground version is much messier. In the conversation with Tarsha McCormick, several patterns showed up that mirror what McKinsey research on diverse leadership performance also highlights about effective people work. The gap between the slide-deck version and the daily practice is where most programs fall apart.

The data backs the case. McKinsey's Women in the Workplace report shows that organizations treating dei strategy as a real discipline outperform peers on engagement, retention, and the cultural metrics that matter most over a multi-year horizon. Companies that treat it as messaging see short-term lift and long-term decline.

For HR leaders building DEI programs, that means starting with the everyday touchpoints where dei strategy either lands or fails: hiring loops, onboarding, manager 1:1s, and performance conversations. These are the places where intention turns into experience, and where employees decide whether they trust the company enough to stay, speak up, and do their best work.

The pattern across high-functioning HR teams is consistent. They write fewer policies, run more pilots, and spend more time in conversation with managers who are actually doing the work. That discipline is harder than rolling out a campaign, but it is the difference between dei strategy as a phrase and dei strategy as a result.

How HR Teams Make DEI Strategy Operational

The shift from concept to operation is where most teams stall. Two questions usually surface in workshops with People leaders.

Where should dei strategy live in the org?

Ownership matters. Programs that sit only with HR rarely get traction. The strongest organizations pair central ownership in HR with distributed accountability across people managers, with a feedback loop into leadership. Employee Engagement can help build the capacity to run that distributed model without losing visibility, and gives the People team a single place to track what is actually happening.

What does success look like in 12 months?

Most teams need a one-year mark with concrete outcomes: a measurable change in equity at work scores, a defined set of policy and process changes, and named owners for the work. Without that, the program drifts and budget questions become harder to defend. The honest version of a 12-month plan also includes two or three things you tried and decided not to repeat.

What Actually Works When You Lead DEI Strategy

Three patterns repeat across People teams that get this work right. The principles cut across industry and company size.

Anchor DEI to the business strategy

If DEI doesn't sit on the same page as growth and product, it gets cut first when budgets tighten.

Build for the long arc, not the news cycle

Programs designed for a quarter don't change cultures. Plan in three to five year horizons.

Hold leaders accountable through metrics they can move

Tie a small percentage of executive comp to specific, measurable DEI outcomes that the leader can actually influence.

These three principles also depend on the underlying culture. Without a baseline of diversity, most operational changes get rejected by the organization's immune system. Build the foundation first.

Where Employee Relations Fits Into DEI Strategy

Whatever the topic, employee relations sits underneath. DEI Strategy programs that ignore the ER reality get blindsided by a case that should have been resolved early. AllVoices builds investigations management and HR case management so HR teams can connect the surface-level work on dei strategy to the deeper work of resolving issues, tracking patterns, and acting on what employees raise. The two are tightly linked: when employees see issues handled fairly, they trust the rest of the work too.

How ER data informs DEI Strategy strategy

Issue patterns, response times, and resolution outcomes give HR a clearer picture than survey data alone. When the ER data is integrated into Company Culture workflows, leaders can see how dei strategy translates into the lived experience of employees who raise concerns, and what to do about it. The teams that move fastest tend to review case themes monthly and feed those insights into the broader people strategy, instead of treating ER as a separate, reactive function.

Frequently Asked Questions About DEI Strategy

What does aligning values with DEI mean?

It means treating DEI as a way to live the company's stated values, not as a parallel track. When values say "we put people first," pay equity, fair promotion, and inclusive hiring become non-negotiable.

How do you keep DEI work going during budget cuts?

Tie it to performance metrics that already matter, like retention, productivity, and customer outcomes. DEI work that proves business impact survives downturns better than work positioned as ethics-only.

What's the role of executives in DEI?

Executives set the tone and the resourcing. McKinsey research shows that companies with engaged senior leadership on DEI consistently outperform those where the work sits exclusively in HR.

How do you measure DEI progress?

Combine representation data, equity audits on pay and promotion, inclusion sentiment from surveys, and qualitative feedback. No single number tells the whole story.

Why do DEI initiatives fail?

They fail when they're disconnected from operations, under-resourced, and treated as PR. Programs that survive are integrated into hiring, performance, and decision-making at every level.

The Bottom Line for HR Leaders

DEI Strategy is not a posture. It's a set of decisions, repeated over time, by people who control budgets, promotions, calendars, and the daily experience of work. The HR leaders who get traction stop treating this as a campaign and start treating it as ongoing operational practice. That reframing matters because it changes how you measure success and where you put your energy week to week.

That shift requires data, follow-through, and a clear point of view. McKinsey research on diverse leadership performance and the broader research community make the business case clearer every year. The companies that act on it consistently win on retention, culture, and outcomes that show up on the financial statement. The ones that keep treating the work as branding tend to lose ground quietly, then noisily.

The conversation with Tarsha McCormick is a useful reminder that the work is doable. None of it requires a huge HR team or a massive budget. It requires clear thinking, consistent execution, and the willingness to adjust when the data tells you to. Pair that mindset with the right tooling and the right partners, and dei strategy stops being aspirational and becomes a measurable part of how the business runs.

Want to see how AllVoices supports HR teams running this work? Book a demo.