Over the last few years, companies have made bold commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many issued public statements, launched new initiatives, and promised lasting change. But today, some of those same organizations are quietly rolling back their efforts, citing shifting priorities or external pressures.
What does that tell us? For many, DEI was never truly embedded in their business strategy—it was a response to the moment. But as Nicole Armstrong, Founder and CEO of Ellequate, explains in this episode of Life + Leadership, the companies that treat equity as a fundamental business imperative, rather than a temporary initiative, are the ones that will thrive.
Nicole and her team at Ellequate have pioneered an advanced analytics platform that helps companies move beyond performative DEI efforts and build truly inclusive, responsive workplaces. By using behavioral science and data-driven insights, they help organizations create sustainable equity strategies that improve retention, boost engagement, and strengthen organizational health.
“If you can easily undo your DEI efforts, they weren’t systemic to begin with,” Nicole explained. “Equity should be part of the way you operate, not something you switch on and off.”
The Workforce is Changing—Is Your Company Keeping Up?
One of the most compelling points from this conversation is the simple fact that the workforce is evolving—whether businesses are ready or not.
By 2045, the majority of the U.S. workforce will be Black or Hispanic. More than half of the college-educated workforce is already women. Companies that fail to recognize these shifts risk losing out on top talent.
Nicole challenges leaders to rethink outdated assumptions about DEI and instead see equity as a long-term investment. When companies embed fair and transparent systems into their policies and practices, they don’t just improve workplace culture—they create a competitive advantage.
“The language around DEI may change, but the business case for equity is stronger than ever,” Nicole said. “Companies that get this right will attract and retain the best talent. Those that don’t will struggle to keep up.”
Real Change Starts With Systems, Not Slogans
Nicole shared a powerful example of what happens when a company truly commits to systemic change. A manufacturing company Ellequate worked with realized that their lowest-paid employees—primarily women of color—were struggling to make ends meet, despite earning above market rate. Some even turned down raises because they feared losing critical benefits like childcare.
Instead of accepting the status quo, leadership took action. They set their minimum wage at $24 an hour, aligning pay with the true cost of living. The impact was immediate. Employees felt valued, engaged, and eager to grow within the company. Retention improved, and the company saw higher levels of productivity and commitment from their workforce.
“Equity isn’t just about compliance—it’s about creating workplaces where people want to stay, grow, and contribute,” Nicole emphasized. “This company didn’t just say they valued their employees; they backed it up with action.”
This example reinforces a key message from our conversation: Real change happens at the systems level. It’s not about one-off initiatives or training programs. It’s about redesigning workplace structures, pay policies, and hiring practices to ensure fairness and opportunity for all employees.
The Problem With “Merit” as a DEI Replacement
With some companies scaling back their DEI efforts, there has been a push to replace these initiatives with terms like “Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence” (MEI). On the surface, these words sound reasonable. But as Nicole pointed out, they are often deeply subjective and rooted in historical bias.
Merit is rarely as objective as we think. Hiring decisions are often influenced by social capital—who went to the “right” schools, who has access to the strongest networks, or who previously worked at prestigious companies. Intelligence is another loaded term. Are we measuring emotional intelligence? Creativity? Problem-solving? Historically, intelligence has been used as a tool to justify exclusion, rather than inclusion.
“If companies really want workplaces built on fairness and performance, they should be doubling down on equity—not replacing it with vague, historically biased criteria,” Nicole said.
Equity as a Business Strategy, Not a Trend
For companies that are serious about creating lasting impact, equity cannot be an initiative that fluctuates with public pressure or leadership changes. It must be woven into the fabric of how the business operates.
Nicole urges leaders to ask themselves:
- Are our policies and practices truly aligned with our values?
- Do our systems create real opportunity, or can they be easily undone?
- Are we making workforce decisions based on long-term success, or short-term perception?
By embedding equity into workplace systems, organizations can drive better retention, stronger engagement, and more sustainable business outcomes.
A Call to Action for Leaders
Companies that invest in equitable policies now will be the ones that thrive in the future. As the workforce continues to evolve, organizations that embrace transparency, fair pay, and inclusive leadership will have a clear advantage.
As leaders, we have the opportunity—and responsibility—to create workplaces where people feel valued, supported, and empowered to do their best work.
Are you ready to take the next step in building a workplace that truly works for everyone?
Listen to the full conversation with Nicole Armstrong on Life + Leadership to learn how to move beyond performative DEI efforts and make equity a lasting part of your business success.
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Transcript
Note: Transcript is auto-generated.
Tegan Trovato
Welcome to the podcast, Nicole.
Nicole Armstrong
Thanks for having me again, excited to be here.
Tegan Trovato
Such a pleasure. you know, we’re in such an unusual time right now. And I just felt like, wow, how lucky we are to have you join us to talk about, what eloquate does and, more deeply, we’re going to talk a bit about diversity, equity and inclusion. and, and the state of things today has an impact about where we may go. So, but first tell our listeners what you do so we can anchor into that and really understand where a lot of your answers today are coming from.
Nicole Armstrong
Absolutely. So Elequate, we are an organization and a platform that really helps organizations understand how their systems, so for example, like their policies, their practices, their benefits, how those actually impact employee experience, maybe in similar ways and maybe in very dissimilar ways. And so how do we close those gaps in experience so that we can better engage and retain employees? And so we really…
kind of take the guesswork out of meeting employees where they are and help employers take a systems lens approach to change so that they’re really staying ahead of the workforce and meeting the needs of those evolving, I would say, employee needs, evolving expectations, all of those things.
Tegan Trovato
Great. And as we record today for listeners to know, you know, we are a couple months, nope, not even a month into a new presidential administration. So the Trump administration has begun and, we’re in a chapter where many organizations have wavered on their DEI policy and programming. The federal government under the administration has ended DEI initiatives by executive order. But I know Nicole that you and I share the belief that equity will not go out of style.
And we know that diversity is upon us and it is the absolute unstoppable future. It doesn’t matter what your policies are. We have an increasingly diverse workforce. You can probably give us some numbers around that. So I think we know this is a season we’re in and it will probably not stay because diversity is here and equity is going to continue to be demanded. So what else might you share?
You are welcome to add color to what that was my opinion and belief add color as you’d like, but what would you share about your own outlook right now on DEI?
Nicole Armstrong
You know, I think it’s normal for a language to evolve and it’s okay if language evolves. And I think that we’ve seen some pushback and some conversation around DEI for some time. I think as we begin to see some of the more policy driven rollback of DEI, it raises a couple of questions and some really good conversation. And one of the things I completely agree with something that you said is that when we think about equity within the workplace,
really what we’re referring to is creating systems that help us achieve what we are hoping to achieve with a merit-based system, right? And the idea behind diversity, equity and inclusion, the whole reason it was born was really to address systemic barriers and discrimination that women and people of color and LGBTQ plus employees and others with different marginalized identities were experiencing in the workplace. And so it was born out of a real need.
Right. And that’s not to say that we have been able to achieve all the promises that DEI had made or that some of these programs had made or companies had made. And so I think the important thing to remember is that no matter what we call it, no matter how the language shifts, companies who are committed to creating a workplace where all of their employees can thrive, who recognize that there’s evolving needs of the workforce and that the workforce, quite honestly, is changing. Right.
We have, by 2045, the majority of the workforce is going to be Black or Hispanic. When we think about the college-educated workforce, over half of them are women. So this isn’t something that can easily be disentangled from business strategy. This is not just a moral imperative, but it really is a business imperative. And I think that organizations who understand that are going to be the ones who succeed moving into the future.
Whatever we call it, however it evolves, the commitment to achieving a standard that is fair and trusted and transparent will remain. And I think the next iteration of what DEI becomes is where organizations are looking to next.
Tegan Trovato
To bring this for life to us, if you could think of maybe a client or two from Aveliquates and who’s what are they doing in partnership with you to help to create more of that from a systemic perspective inside of their organizations?
Nicole Armstrong
I love this question because I think so oftentimes DEI is often viewed as like a program or separate initiative, right? People can think of it as trainings that they might have attended or a workshop that they might have gone to. But really when DEI is done in a sustainable way, it’s not a program or initiative. We have to remember that diversity, equity and inclusion are outcomes of really intentional efforts. And those are efforts across the entire organization. So for example,
We work with one employer in the arts industry. And their goal was really to create an employee base that reflected the community in which they lived and worked. And so we worked with them to really reevaluate their hiring practices, helping them create an interview guide and scoring rubric, get really clear on what it is they were looking for in each role, what were the skills and experiences and attributes that were required for that role.
And then how would you measure that when you interview someone, right? How do you create very distinct understanding of what is a strong answer versus maybe a weaker answer? And it’s okay in those instances as well to think about how do we incorporate lived experience if that’s going to be of benefit to this role. And so incorporating things like that. And so by using this interview guide and scoring rubric structure, they revamped
all of their job descriptions and hiring practice from their entry level folks all the way up to their executive leadership team. And within two years, they had a staff that was representative of the community that really brought in the talent they needed to meet the needs of not only their employees, but of new audiences. And so that’s one way that demonstrates not only was it good for the organization and good for the people within the organization, but it was also a
a good business choice and it was great for the community. So that’s one example. Another example I can think about is an organization in manufacturing. And we often talk about compensation and how you think about compensation philosophy and pay structures. And one of the things that we like to share with employers or to be aware of is this concept of the cliff effect, which basically means that for employees maybe in lower wage jobs, when they get a pay increase, they can lose benefits.
Nicole Armstrong
that disproportionately impact them. So, you know, they may get a slight pay increase, but now they’ve lost access to childcare, and that is going to cost them way more than the pay increase could cover. So we were talking and working with a client, and one of the things we often share when we talk about the Clift Effect is the disproportionate impact specifically on women, and more specifically women of color.
And so they went back to the organization, they looked at all of their pay structures and found that the lowest paid roles in the organization were indeed filled by women of color. And even though they were paying market rate, they were paying above market rate actually, that those folks were eligible for public assistance and had asked specifically to not get a pay increase because they were afraid of losing their benefits. And so…
what the organization did was really do a deep dive into what was a living wage in the region and what would it take to align their pay structures with their business strategy, which was really around sustainability and positive impact. And so they found that the living wage in that region was $24 an hour and the head of HR that we were working with went to the CEO and said, hey, listen, here’s the situation. We have employees who are not making a living wage.
Tegan Trovato
you
Nicole Armstrong
And this is what it would take to close that gap. And he said, absolutely, let’s do it. And they instituted that $24 an hour minimum wage. And it was life changing for those employees. But it was also really incredibly beneficial for the organization. I had a chance to talk with a couple of the employees and they said, I’m never leaving this organization. I feel valued now. And I want to learn and grow within this organization. And last time I checked in, they were already engaging in some training programs to move up. And so
When we think about those approaches, those are the kinds of approaches that we really are talking about when we talk about systems level approaches. How do we ensure that employees’ needs are being met and how do we create systems that allow employees to have a consistent experience? And how do we create systems that hold us to account? That when we say we value something, we actually see the outcomes of those statements.
Tegan Trovato
So I’m hearing really that the outcomes are measurable. That sounds like one of the key standouts about what systemic approach really is about. Are there other components or characteristics of a truly systemic DEI program?
Nicole Armstrong
Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re really thinking about your efforts to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the efforts that you have in place could be undone quickly. So for example, canceling a workshop or maybe firing an executive who was hired to be in charge of DEI or maybe dismantling a committee. If those efforts
can be done undone quickly, then they’re more likely performative. It’s not that there’s anything wrong in those efforts specifically, but if the structures aren’t in place to support them, it’s more theater than it is systems change. When we think systems change, we think of things that are deeply embedded. It’s how you hire, right? It’s everything from how you recruit talent to how you conduct interviews to how you assess candidates to how you make those final choices.
It’s in your performance evaluation systems. It’s in your promotion systems. It’s in your compensation systems. It’s in even the structures of accountability. What do people do when they need to report something that doesn’t feel right in the organization? What systems are in place? What’s the process for that? So when we think about systems-based approaches to achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion,
Those are so deeply embedded that it becomes part of your operations, that if you were to try to undo them, it would take a lot of effort and a lot of retraining because you have really created your operations, right? It’s not an ideology, it’s a methodology. And so if you have done it well, you can’t easily undo it. And you really wouldn’t need to, because at the end of the day, when you create these systems, they’re smarter systems, they’re more efficient.
They create better expectations around behaviors and measurable outcomes, all of those things that are smart choices that we make in business all the time. So when it’s done well, it becomes measurable just like any other part of your business.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm.Beautiful. And for listeners, I want to be clear, Eloquate is the organization Nicole is founded in leads is, you know, it’s a technology platform, it’s a community. And it isn’t focused solely on DEI, like you’re going in and assessing the organization holistically with employee surveys and or gauge organizational assessments. And that leads you to often looking at hiring practices, pay equity, but also work life integration.
how representative leadership is of employee and field populations, professional development, the workplace culture, right? So am I hitting all the things? Okay.
Nicole Armstrong
You’re all the things. Absolutely right.
Tegan Trovato
I want to call that out simply because I’m focusing us quite heavily on DEI, but I want to make sure our listeners understand that your organization’s focusing quite broadly on what is leading to engaged or disengaged employees. So I just wanted to take a moment to make sure I was also being clear as an interviewer today about that.
Nicole Armstrong
I appreciate that. And that’s absolutely right. Because anytime we’re looking at how employees experience the workplace, we have to take a holistic approach. Because employees aren’t sort of a monogamous group, they’re a homogenous group. They are diverse, just in and of itself of having multiple people within a workplace. You already have diversity within your workplace. And the needs of employees are going to differ based on where they’re coming from, whether that’s family status or whether they’re entry level or executive level, or whether that may be if they have a disability that they’re coming into the workplace with, right? So everyone’s experience is very unique. And when we think about diversity, equity and inclusion, I think the challenge is that it’s been put into this very small box. But when we think about them as outcomes, this encompasses everything from the moment you interview to the moment you’re promoted, to how you experience the integration between your home life and your work life, all of those things are included. So we measure employee experiences and perceptions in each of those areas of the workplace. But then we go a little bit further because it’s not enough to know how employees feel about something. You have to understand what’s driving those perceptions and experiences and bring it back to your systems. And so that’s really what we focus on doing is helping employers understand how do their operational systems either support or not support their employees and how can we really help solve some of those gaps in employee experience by changing the systems and redesigning the systems themselves.
Tegan Trovato
You know, as you and I were talking prior to us recording, one of the things you you and I touched on, which I found fascinating, was how we determine the market value of employees. And the reason I found that interesting is because of my own background in executive search and recruitment and then moving into talent development over the last 15 years. Pay is a topic I talk about on a regular basis with folks and have for decades. And I’m familiar with sourcing market data. You know, in the old days, I would lead in market recruitment practices to set up new sites. So we’d be looking at, okay, what do people expect to make here? And what’s the value of this work? And it was really crunchy data.
That’s a really generic word, but what you’ve described to me is something much more dynamic and that there is a more evolved approach we should be taking to that assessment. So could you tell listeners a bit more? You know, we have a lot of people, leaders listening, probably a lot of chief people, officers listening. What should we be thinking about when it comes to market value for different roles?
Nicole Armstrong
I love this question because oftentimes I think it requires a shift in mindset. And sometimes we get stuck in how things have been done and we assume that’s how they should be done versus really thinking about why they were designed that way in the first place, right? You know, I think systems are designed to give us the outcomes that we get. And whether that’s intentional or unintentional,
everything is designed in some way to achieve the outcomes that we have. And so when we think about pay inequity, that’s not by mistake. It’s by design. And so when we think about how pay decisions are made, oftentimes it’s rooted in assumptions about how we value work. And so one of the things we often share with our employers and talk about more deeply with employers is this idea of occupational segregation. And this means that
that can be both horizontal and vertical. So horizontal segregation would mean that certain industries are filled predominantly by certain demographics. So you think about maybe male dominated professions versus female dominated professions. For example, finance, maybe versus teaching, right? So that’s what we would call horizontal segregation. And then vertical segregation is by level.
So we know that women and people of color tend to be segregated at the entry level and mid-level positions within an organization. And men, and specifically white men, were overrepresented in top leadership positions. So when we think about market value, oftentimes we’re thinking about what we pay a specific profession and at what level. That’s the basis of that.
And the challenge with that thinking is that when we look historically at how we value positions, when positions are male dominated, we tend to pay them more. And even when professions are female dominated, but men move into that field, the pay for that very same job that women were doing before goes up. And the same is true in the reverse. So if women move into male dominated professions in large numbers, that pay actually goes down.
And so it’s not that we actually value jobs in a specific way, it’s we value the people that fill them. And so what we are often seeing when it comes to the gender pay gap and the racial pay gap is a devaluation of jobs based on the people who typically fill them. And if we were going to take a more fair approach to pay,
we would focus less on the industry or less on the job title, for example, and focus more on the skills and the attributes and the experiences that person is bringing to the role, right? So like I said previously, we were working with the client in manufacturing. They were paying above market value, but that was still below living wage. And those were jobs that tended to be dominated by women. So the market will devalue them for that reason.
So we encourage employers to think about market value differently. We say, okay, what are the skills and attributes required for this job? And are there other jobs in similar spaces that are getting paid more simply because they tend to be dominated more by men? When we’re looking at jobs that require college education, for instance, or maybe require a certain number of years of experience or certain technical skills, or even certain soft skills, what are other jobs that could have
comparable attributes that are required and how are we rewarding those? So one is more of a skills-based approach to compensation versus a specific role or job title. The second thing that we would really encourage employers to think about is the internal value of a role. Maybe ask yourselves, how long could your organization function if someone was not in this role? If the answer is not very long, so for example, we think of say for instance, a social service agency that might employ social workers and they’re serving the community and they’re managing clients and all of the important things that they do. If they were to leave tomorrow and you had no one in those roles, could your organization function? And the answer is no, which means that the internal value is quite high. Same thing if we were to think about hospitality, right? If your housekeeping staff were to leave tomorrow, could you function? Probably not.
And so even though the market has devalued that role, that role is actually very important to the organization itself. So really understanding what’s the benchmark in the organization and the value of that role internally, right? And then the final piece that we would encourage folks to think about is living wage. And oftentimes market value pays well below living wage. And you may or may not be able to adjust to living wage right away.
But it’s important to understand where you sit, because oftentimes what we’ve learned from employers is that they really don’t have a concept of the living wage for their region. And so there’s not even a place to start a discussion if you don’t know what that number is. So if you’re really wondering what’s the living wage, how do I know? MIT Living Wage Calculator is a really great resource. You can even drill down by county.
and really figure out even by family size, what’s a living wage for your region. And sometimes that’s a great conversation starter to understand, you know, what is our take? How do we want to pay within our organization? What’s our philosophy on pay? But really challenging those assumptions of market value is the first place to start because they’re often rooted in historical bias.
Tegan Trovato
Great. That was a free education for a lot of us. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And, um, and they’ll talk with us a bit about the emergence of M E I this was new for me too. I don’t know if I should be embarrassed to say that, but I hadn’t heard much about it, um, until recently myself.
Nicole Armstrong
So you. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s interesting with the pushback on DEI and some of the rollback on DEI, there has been sort of a shift to maybe new terminology coming out. Civility is one term that folks have been using. MEI is the other, which stands for Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. And the challenge with this notion of merit, excellence, and intelligence is that it’s often rooted in very subjective terms, right?
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with these terms, right? You would hear them and you would think, well, that seems reasonable, right? That we would value someone based on their merit, based on the excellence that they produce in the organization and on intelligence. But the challenge with that, especially when it comes to merit, is that merit is often a very subjective term that can be used as a proxy for other things. So for example, the college that you graduated from. The social network that you have access to, maybe the companies that you worked at before. And oftentimes that’s driven by social capital, which a lot of times folks from underrepresented communities don’t have as much access to. And so you’re already limiting the pool and saying you’re hiring based on merit, but really these are just proxies for opportunity. The other challenge with merit is that there has been studies done when you look at hiring professionals.
Who were given two resumes exactly the same. The only difference was that one was a male name and one was a female name. And they asked the person to evaluate that application based on merit. the research found that they were more likely to select white men or men in general based on what they would consider merit, right? And so even the term merit can skew to what we would consider sort of the default worker, which tends to be male. So the challenge with merit isn’t in and of itself merit itself, but it’s how do we define it? What are we actually measuring when we’re thinking about merit and what that entails? When it comes to excellence, again, I think oftentimes workplaces are designed by the people in the positions of power within those workplaces. so excellence tends to come from a like white centered, male centered perspective.
Nicole Armstrong
And we often lose diverse perspectives when we think about it only from that experience and that framework. And so while excellence in and of itself isn’t a terrible term, how do we define excellence? Who is defining excellence? And how are we actually measuring that and making sure that we’re mitigating bias and how we define those things? When it comes to intelligence, the challenge with intelligence is what types of intelligence are we even talking about here, right?
People have many different kinds of intelligence. What are we saying is most relevant to this job or to this performance or to this position within the organization? The other challenge with intelligence is that it’s often been weaponized against marginalized communities, right? You have pseudoscience studies that define intelligence based on race and all of the other historical wrongs and inequities that come along with that. So intelligence…
is a very subjective place to play and that’s where bias can creep in. So merit, excellence and intelligence really are not a substitute for what we’re trying to accomplish. And if anything really served to maybe more undermine what the outcomes is that we’re actually trying to achieve.
Tegan Trovato
Yeah, it just seems like in this chapter we’re in, as we are, we have things proposed as replacements for DEI, we really would be well served to question what they’re rooted in, how we define it, is it real science behind it? Has it been road tested? If so, where and for how long? And to just really be smart consumers of what’s being served up.
You know, I think we can forget quickly that DEI was rooted in a lot of science is rooted in a lot of science and it has been road tested. and as you are providing us, there’s a ton of data if we want it to understand it. So it seems like I’m just, is my like suggestion for our leaders listening that we really scrutinize what’s being offered up as potential replacements or even replacement language. because as we unpack just MEI, which is one of a few things that’s being tossed around right now.
It’s potentially really offensive and rooted in historic inequity. And we don’t want to be even on accident, repeating some of that in word or deed. Right. So I appreciate that. Yeah.
Nicole Armstrong
That’s absolutely right. Yeah. The other thing I would add is that when your efforts to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion are done well, you have a merit-based system, right? The goal of creating equity within systems is that it does become more merit-based. You are mitigating bias in the systems that may have been driven by, you know, connections to your social network that may have been driven by affinity bias, that may have been driven by any number of cognitive biases that we’re not aware of and we’re not intending to influence our behavior, but they do. And by simply redesigning the systems, we can mitigate that so that we actually do have a merit-based system, that it really is based on someone who is incredibly qualified for the job, who’s going to exceed in that role, and who is also going to add.
Something to the organization as well. And so I think it’s just important to remember that no matter what the terminology is, if the intention is to do the work well, you’re working in systems. And even if we come up with new terminology, if it is surface level approaches, it doesn’t matter what that new terminology is. We’re not going to achieve the outcomes we’re hoping to achieve.
Tegan Trovato
Great, thank you. We’ll edit this out, Nicole, but I’m gonna pause this for a sec and just say, is there anything else that’s coming up for you as I’ve gotten you all warmed up that you wanna make sure we spend a little time on? And I’ll hit some questions that way, or how are you feeling right now?
Nicole Armstrong
Okay, let me think. I don’t know if we would want to hit on like.
I don’t know what your thoughts are on hitting on people rolling back their DEI efforts. I know we talked about this a little bit, but…
Or if we want to, I don’t know if you would want to talk a little bit about the business case for this. I know we’ve talked about this as well. What makes sense for you as you’re thinking about the conversation? Are there other questions coming up for you that make sense? And I feel like, I don’t know if you want me to go back and answer any of the other questions differently, if you feel like some of them were not clear. No? Okay. No, go ahead.
Tegan Trovato
No, you’re great. I love both of those. think, you know, I’m trying to think of how I frame the rolling back of the DEI efforts. It could simply be how would this sit for you, Nicole? What should we be thinking about when it comes to the fact that many organizations are rolling back their DEI efforts? Is that a good prompt for you?
Nicole Armstrong
Yeah, or like that we’ve seen in the media, some are, because I think maybe then we can also talk about the organizations who are not and why.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm hmm. Why they’re not or why they are. Yeah.
Nicole Armstrong
why they’re not. Like interesting. And that leads to the business case.
Tegan Trovato
And then that leads to the business case. Yeah, great. Great. Okay, anything else?
Nicole Armstrong
I think that’s all that’s coming up for me. Are there any questions coming up?
Tegan Trovato
That’s strong. Well, there’s no not not like topically in this thread, but I will close by saying, you know, what do you want our listeners thinking about? Or is there advice you might give us as we leave here today? So that’ll be my last question. Okay. Okay, I’m gonna get us back in the groove then. So and Leah, we might think about if this gets edited and moved to the top, like closer to the opening is like a stage setting thought. So we’ll just see what you think of the flow when we’re done, Leah. So
Nicole Armstrong
Okay.
Tegan Trovato
Nicole, talk to me about what we’re seeing in the news lately with organizations rolling back their DEI efforts. And some are not.
Nicole Armstrong
and some are not. I think what’s interesting is maybe a natural progression of the life cycle of these efforts within the organizations. And what I mean by that is a lot of organizations signed on and made public statements to diversity, equity, and inclusion after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. And some of that stemmed perhaps from an awareness, but some of it also stemmed from public pressure.
And because there was a lot of conversation happening at the time, organizations felt they needed to do something and say something, and they put a stake in the ground by making public statements. Those same companies that made those public statements have recently rolled back their efforts, right? They’ve made public statements that they’re no longer going to engage in DEI. But here’s the thing. If you can easily undo those efforts, as we’ve mentioned, if you can easily say we’re not going to engage in DEI anymore, then those efforts were most likely performative. And at the end of the day, maybe that’s okay, because oftentimes those performative efforts can be more harmful, right? If you don’t have the systems in place to actually support employees, to actually help them thrive within their roles, to help them grow and access opportunity within the organization, then sometimes those statements cause more harm than they do good because you say that you have a commitment, but your employees are experiencing something very different. And so it’s okay. If employers are going to roll back some of those performative measures, that’s absolutely fine. It allows employees, it allows customers, it allows shareholders to know exactly where they sit, right? At the same time, we have organizations who have doubled down on their efforts who have said, we are not going to do away with our efforts because they’re really good for business, right? We have an incredible workforce. We have incredible customers, loyal customers who continue to come back and we’re performing better than we did before we had these efforts. In that case, these are most likely embedded efforts where decision-making is through the lens of those outcomes, right? You know that you’re doing this work well.
Nicole Armstrong
when every decision you’re making within the organization is through the lens of how do our values align with our operations? And that’s exactly what efforts to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion should be. They should be an opera. It should be the opera. It should be the, let me go back on that.
Tegan Trovato
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yep, just restart.
Nicole Armstrong
So that’s exactly what those efforts should be. It should be operationalizing your values, right? It should be an alignment and understanding of why these outcomes are important to your business success. And so as organizations are thinking about moving forward, whether they decide to keep the term DEI or whether they decide to take on different terminology, the beauty of systems level work is it doesn’t require a label. It is just how you do things.
And so when you think about your commitment and you think about the values and the mission of your organization and what you are hoping to accomplish, if part of that is having a workforce that brings different experiences and different perspectives and different skills and different talents, if that is making sure that employees feel valued and they feel that the leadership is fair, that they have an opportunity to succeed so that they can be the most productive and thriving versions of themselves.
If that means that people show up and they feel like they belong, that they feel that they want to contribute to this larger purpose, if that is your goal as a business, then embedding these things become natural. And there’s no need to worry about labels because it’s just how you operate.
Tegan Trovato
I appreciate our conversation so much today because I feel there’s been so much swirl around DEI and it’s highly been highly, highly politicized as of late. And what I experienced as I hear you talk is us anchoring back into what we know is true and real. And we will have to allow some of the swirl because it is more broadly systemic and
We will have to work through that system to see some of that come back. But for those of us who understand what we’re doing when we’re doing this DEI work and believe in systemic change, we have to just stay focused. And yeah, yeah.
Nicole Armstrong
The work continues. Yeah, the terms can change. There can be an attempt to roll back some of these efforts, but at the end of the day, smart business leaders know that this work is critical to their success, right? Expectations are changing, the workforce is changing, employee needs are shifting. Of course this makes business sense. Of course it does. So the work won’t stop. How we talk about the work may shift, but the work keeps going.
Tegan Trovato
Well said. Well said. So this might have been your answer to my last closing question, Nicole, but as we close today, what do you most want the thousands of leaders who are tuned in to be thinking about? Or is there any advice you might give them?
Nicole Armstrong
I think a lot of folks, the instinct may be to respond out of fear. And that’s natural. When there is a large shift, when there is uncertainty, when it feels like the situation is volatile, when we don’t know what to expect next, oftentimes we want to react out of fear. But what I would challenge leaders to think about is how do you react through strategy, right?
How do you really begin to think strategically of the path forward? And when we think about risk, sure, there might be some risk in maintaining your efforts to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion given some of these shifts and some of the narratives around this work, but there’s also a real risk in not doing these things and in not doing these things well. I think about how long it takes to build trust with your employees and how many years you may have been communicating to your employees about why this is so critically important to your organization, it takes a really long time to build trust and it takes one small quick decision to destroy it. And so while there is risk in maybe maintaining those efforts, I think there’s even more risk in not figuring out a path forward that’s in alignment with your values, that is still compliant, but that is systems-based so that you stay on your path so that you know where you’re going and no amount of rhetoric is going to change that. The terms may change, but your vision remains the same. And there are strategies out there to support you in that. And I would just challenge leaders to think through their next steps carefully and also potentially engage other folks in that decision-making, that co-creation process. Get in touch, start talking with your employees, start talking with your other stakeholders start talking with your board members, your customers, because what they say and what they share may surprise you and will also, I think, create the community needed to move forward at this time.
Tegan Trovato
Nicole, thank you so much for joining us today and for anchoring anchoring us back in what we know to be true and real and bringing a little calm to the narrative. That’s what I experienced today as I hear you speak. So thank you so much.
Nicole Armstrong
Thank you, Tegan. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
