In this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, we spoke with Brandon Bell, North America Diversity and Inclusion Lead at Syngenta. Brandon takes a systemic, human-centered approach to building DEI strategies across global business environments, and he is refreshingly direct about what actually separates durable DEI programs from the ones that fade out when political winds shift.
The conversation kept coming back to a single idea. The business case for DEI is real, well-documented, and widely misunderstood. Leaders who treat DEI as a social program with tangential business benefits rarely sustain it. Leaders who treat DEI as a business practice with social impact often do.
What the Business Case for DEI Actually Says
The business case for DEI rests on three well-documented findings. Representation diversity at the top is associated with better financial performance. Inclusive cultures outperform on retention and productivity. Employees who experience fair treatment are more likely to stay, perform, and recommend the company to others.
McKinsey's Diversity Matters Even More research covers 1,265 companies across 23 countries and shows that the business case for executive diversity has more than doubled since 2015. Top-quartile companies in 2015 had a 15 percent likelihood of higher financial performance. By 2023 that figure reached 39 percent. The direction is consistent across every iteration of the research.
The research also shows that the companies falling behind are falling behind faster, which is important for HR leaders making the case internally. Standing still on DEI is not neutral. The gap to the leaders is widening.
Additional context from BetterUp's research on the value of belonging at work reinforces the point. Belonging correlates with a 56 percent lift in job performance and a 50 percent drop in turnover risk. Those numbers translate directly into operating savings and revenue protection, which is the language finance teams understand.
How the Business Case Shows Up Inside Companies
What metrics best express the DEI business case?
Retention by group, promotion velocity by group, voluntary turnover cost, and the financial impact of preventable ER cases. Each of these is already tracked by finance and operations teams, which means the DEI case can be integrated into standard business reviews rather than discussed as a standalone topic.
How do you defend DEI investment during budget cuts?
Connect it to the metrics finance already cares about. Voluntary turnover cost, time to fill, and absenteeism all respond to DEI investment. Translating the DEI program into those terms makes it much harder to cut without offsetting costs.
Brandon also pushed back on the idea that the business case is only useful when defending DEI. In his practice, the case is also useful for internal prioritization. Teams that use business metrics to choose between two DEI investments tend to make sharper choices and produce better results than teams that choose based on enthusiasm alone.
That selection discipline is what turns DEI from a list of initiatives into a portfolio with defensible returns. Small DEI teams especially benefit, because they have fewer resources to spread across initiatives. Choosing the one or two investments with the highest expected return beats running five underfunded programs.
What Actually Works When Making the Business Case
Principle 1: Lead with data the CFO already trusts
HR-specific metrics carry less weight in budget discussions than metrics already in the business review. Reframing DEI in terms of retention cost, productivity loss from turnover, and risk exposure produces a sharper conversation.
Principle 2: Tie DEI outcomes to ER patterns
Strong HR case management paired with a DEI-informed operating model gives the organization visibility into where DEI investment would produce the most case reduction. That mapping is often the clearest picture of ROI.
Principle 3: Report the business case alongside the social case
Organizations that hide behind the business case alone tend to look transactional. Organizations that hide behind the social case alone tend to lose funding. Pairing the two is more durable than either on its own.
Another dimension worth naming: the reputational value of a well-run DEI program is easy to measure through hiring metrics. Offer acceptance rates among underrepresented candidates, pipeline diversity, and employer review scores all respond to program maturity. These are not soft metrics. They are inputs to the talent function the CFO already funds.
DEI leaders working in compliance-heavy environments can also draw on ER pattern data to sharpen the business case. Risk-adjusted case reduction is a finance-friendly way to talk about why the program is worth funding.
Where Employee Relations Fits
ER is where the business case is tested. Preventable case volume, time to resolution, and the cost of litigated matters are all directly shaped by DEI maturity. When executives see those numbers move, DEI investment becomes an operating commitment rather than a political one.
ER drill-down: quantifying the DEI impact on case economics
Track the correlation between DEI program milestones and three case metrics: volume per thousand employees, time to resolution, and the share of cases that escalate to legal review. As DEI maturity increases, these numbers tend to improve. The improvement is a defensible dollar figure that can be included in finance reporting.
Building this muscle inside HR takes effort, but it is the muscle that keeps DEI funded across economic cycles and leadership changes.
Frequently Asked Questions About the DEI Business Case
Is the business case for DEI overstated?The research is strong but often misread. The business case is real and consistent across multiple studies, but it is not a guarantee that any specific DEI program will produce immediate financial returns. The returns are cumulative and require implementation rigor.How do you defend DEI spending when the company is cutting costs?Map the spending to outcomes finance already tracks. DEI programs that reduce turnover among a specific group can be defended with the same logic as any other retention investment.Does the business case hold in industries with thin margins?Yes, and often with more lift. Thin-margin businesses rely heavily on retention and productivity, both of which respond to inclusion work. The case is easier to make, not harder.Is the business case enough to protect DEI during political pushback?On its own, no. But paired with business metrics, a clear operating rhythm, and strong ER data, DEI investment survives most political cycles. The case becomes harder to dismiss when it is embedded in how the business measures performance.How long does it take to demonstrate DEI business results?Twelve to twenty-four months is typical. Faster than that is usually a reporting artifact. Slower than that is usually an implementation issue. Either way, HR leaders need to set expectations honestly.
Does the business case hold in industries with thin margins?Yes, and often with more lift. Thin-margin businesses rely heavily on retention and productivity, both of which respond to inclusion work. The case is easier to make, not harder.Is the business case enough to protect DEI during political pushback?On its own, no. But paired with business metrics, a clear operating rhythm, and strong ER data, DEI investment survives most political cycles. The case becomes harder to dismiss when it is embedded in how the business measures performance.How long does it take to demonstrate DEI business results?Twelve to twenty-four months is typical. Faster than that is usually a reporting artifact. Slower than that is usually an implementation issue. Either way, HR leaders need to set expectations honestly.
How long does it take to demonstrate DEI business results?Twelve to twenty-four months is typical. Faster than that is usually a reporting artifact. Slower than that is usually an implementation issue. Either way, HR leaders need to set expectations honestly.
Finally, the business case is most persuasive when paired with named examples from inside the company. HR leaders who can point to a specific team that reduced turnover after a targeted DEI investment, or a specific manager whose coaching moved inclusion scores, produce a far more credible story than leaders who rely only on external benchmarks. Both kinds of evidence matter, but the internal examples almost always close the argument.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Brandon's experience is a useful reminder that the business case for DEI is not a rhetorical tool. It is a real argument grounded in real data, and HR leaders who make it well protect their programs from the political swings that otherwise dominate the conversation. The leaders who rely exclusively on social arguments are the ones who find themselves relitigating the case every time a new CEO arrives.
The combined case is stronger. Social impact, fairness, and business performance all reinforce each other, and all three show up in the metrics that already matter to the executive team. HR leaders who frame DEI in those terms produce more durable programs and less volatile budgets.
The work is the same. The framing is what changes how it is received.
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