On this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, we sat down with Coltrane Stansbury, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at MacMillan Learning. Coltrane has built DEI programs from the ground up at Becton Dickinson, PSEG, and Johnson and Johnson, and earlier in his career advised then-Mayor Cory Booker on workforce development in Newark. That blend of corporate and policy work shapes how he thinks about inclusion: as a system of opportunity, not a set of celebrations.
Coltrane argued that the central problem in most DEI programs is not the strategy. It is the measurement. Companies pour resources into hiring, training, and ERG infrastructure, then struggle to show whether anything changed. Without that evidence, programs lose budget when the next downturn arrives. He pushed back on the assumption that statements of solidarity are the bottleneck. The bottleneck, in his view, is the operating discipline that turns a statement into a measurable shift in how careers progress.
That conversation has become more urgent as DEI work moves into a colder political environment. The companies still investing are the ones that can show their work in the language of business: retention, promotion velocity, hiring funnel conversion, and belonging metrics that hold up next to engagement scores.
Why Inclusive Workplace Programs Stall
The first stall happens when programs are designed around activities instead of outcomes. The annual heritage celebration, the keynote speaker, the unconscious bias training. All useful, none decisive. The second stall happens when leadership treats inclusion as an HR program rather than a cross-functional system. The result is a small team carrying the weight of work that should belong to every executive.
The financial case keeps getting stronger. McKinsey research on diversity and performance finds that companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity on executive teams are 36 percent more likely to outperform their peers on profitability. BetterUp research on belonging shows that employees with a high sense of belonging take 75 percent fewer sick days and have a 50 percent lower turnover rate. The signal is consistent. What is missing is the feedback loop that ties program work to those numbers.
The companies that move past the stall share a discipline: they pick three to five outcome metrics, instrument them, publish them internally, and tie program decisions to whether the metrics moved.
What Inclusion Actually Looks Like in the Numbers
Which metrics matter most for inclusive workplaces?
The strongest signals are retention by demographic cohort, time to first promotion by demographic cohort, and inclusion items on the engagement survey trended over time. Hiring metrics matter, but they are upstream. By the time hiring metrics show pressure, retention metrics have usually been telling the same story for a year.
How do you measure belonging without making employees feel surveyed to death?
Use a small set of items that ride on existing surveys. The goal is not a separate belonging survey. The goal is two or three questions in the engagement survey that you trust over time, paired with always-on intake for the moments survey scales miss. Strong inclusion work is anchored in those continuous signals.
What Actually Works: A Framework for Inclusive Workplaces
Design principle one: build a real intake mechanism for inclusion concerns
Most inclusion concerns never reach HR through formal channels. They surface as side comments, exit interview themes, or skip-level meeting hints. A confidential intake channel like a DEI hotline turns those signals into trackable cases. The result is a faster path from individual experience to systemic response.
Design principle two: connect inclusion data to existing people processes
Inclusion is not a separate program. It is a lens on hiring, promotion, performance, and compensation. Run your promotion calibration with cohort views. Run your compensation review with pay equity overlays. Run your hiring scorecards with diverse-slate adherence baked in. The right tooling makes this lightweight, not heavy.
Design principle three: instrument the engagement survey for trend analysis
Use employee surveys to track inclusion-specific items quarterly or biannually. Compare cohorts. Watch for inflection points. Pair survey data with case data to triangulate the moments where reality and perception diverge. That triangulation is what lets you intervene before metrics slide.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Inclusion work and employee relations work converge on the same question: how does this company respond when an employee says something is wrong. AllVoices supports diversity, equity, and inclusion programs by routing inclusion concerns into the same case workflow as harassment, retaliation, and discrimination cases. That convergence prevents the common failure mode where inclusion themes never escalate because no one owns the case.
How does ER tooling reinforce inclusion outcomes?
When inclusion concerns sit in a structured case system, leaders can see the patterns dashboards miss. A single concern is one data point. A pattern across one team or one manager is a case. That visibility is what turns diversity programs into systems that maintain employee engagement across cohorts. For a deeper look at building inclusive programs, see our piece on questions to create an inclusive culture.
Frequently Asked Questions About Inclusive Workplaces
What is the difference between diversity and inclusion?
Diversity describes representation. Inclusion describes whether people feel they belong, can speak up, and have access to opportunity. A company can be diverse without being inclusive, and the difference shows up in retention and promotion patterns within two years.
How long does it take to see outcome shifts from inclusion programs?
Hiring funnel changes appear within four to six quarters. Belonging scores typically move within a year if the program has real teeth. Promotion velocity and retention by cohort take three to four years because the underlying career cycle is slower than the survey cycle.
How should companies handle statements of solidarity?
Skip them unless you can match them with operational commitments. Statements without follow-through erode trust faster than no statement at all. The companies that issued specific commitments in 2020 with named owners and metrics are the ones still being trusted by their employees today.
What role do ERGs play in inclusive workplaces?
ERGs are most effective when they are funded, given executive sponsorship, and tied to measurable business outcomes like recruiting referrals or product feedback. ERGs treated as social clubs produce social club results. ERGs treated as business resources produce business results.
What is the single biggest predictor of an inclusive workplace?
The behavior of middle managers. Programs at the top matter for funding and signaling, but daily inclusion is built or broken in one-on-ones, project assignments, and feedback conversations. Investing in manager development almost always returns more inclusion outcome than investing in another training module.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Coltrane's discipline around measurement is the move most DEI programs need. The companies that survive political and budget pressure are the ones that can show their work in the same language the CEO uses for every other program. Retention. Promotion. Productivity. Engagement.
That clarity does not require less ambition. It requires more rigor. The strongest inclusion programs in the next five years will not be the loudest. They will be the ones with the cleanest metrics and the most reliable feedback loops connecting employee experience to executive decision-making.
That is the program design that holds when the news cycle changes.
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