The Business Benefits of DEI: Why Inclusion Matters

Shirley Engelmeier, CEO and founder of InclusionINC, discusses the evolution of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over the past 30 years and the challenges faced in the present day. She highlights the importance of creating a culture of inclusion in businesses and addresses the pushback against DEI. She emphasizes the need for organizations to communicate the business benefits of DEI.

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📌TALKING POINTS

03:19 - Key Milestones in the Evolution of DEI

07:04 - The Pushback Against DEI: Disinformation and Fringe Ideologies

08:29 - The Business Benefits of DEI and the Importance of Communication

19:24 - The Removal of Equity from DEI Frameworks

25:37 - Educating and Finding Common Ground for DEI

30:15 - Moving Forward: Business-Centric Approach to DEI

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‍🔗CONNECT WITH SHIRLEY

• Website: https://www.inclusion-inc.com/ 
• Shirley’s book ‘Deliberate Disruption’: https://a.co/d/97F0sCi 

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🔗CONNECT WITH TOM

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Tom Finn (00:01.036)

Welcome, welcome to the show, my friends. Today we are learning from Shirley Engelmeier. Shirley, welcome to the show.

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Shirley Engelmeier (00:07.348)

Hey, thank you so much, Tom. I'm delighted to be here with you.

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Tom Finn (00:11.118)

Well, we are delighted to have you. And if you don't know Shirley, let me take a moment just to introduce you to her background, her experience. She's the CEO and founder of Inclusion, INC. She's been a DEI thought leader for over 25 years, and she's been helping Fortune 500 companies like ESPN, 3M, RR Donnelly, US Bank, and certainly a ton of emerging organizations build inclusive cultures to drive business success. Now, Shirley considers herself a practical business person.

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So in our conversation today, we're gonna take that practical approach to what's really happening in DEI in 2024. But before we get there, Shirley, I wanna go backwards to go forward. So tell me what DEI looked like 30 years ago.

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Shirley Engelmeier (00:51.84)

Sure. You know, it's so interesting. That's about the time that I came into this field. I had been in consumer products and my thing in consumer products was that, you know, you have the marketing and the last was Frito -Lay and marketing claimed they did all the work, but you on the sales side of it, you're always trying to say, well, what are we trying to accomplish here and how are we going to try to get it? So the first large project that I was on which speaks to the times was the Denny's consent decree racial discrimination case. There was a focus at that time on disparate treatment. There was an appetite for that and underneath this hair there's a lot of gray from working with the Department of Justice on one side and Denny's C -suite on the other side to come up with a learning that approached how to prevent discriminatory practices at the restaurant. I'll give you a practical example and this may sound odd, but let's say you're going into restaurant and there's a big line and they don't keep a list and they don't ask who's next. Naturally, will tend to go towards people that are like us. And one of the things that happened in that mega lawsuit was white people got seated first. So if you just took an operational approach and made sure every time who was next, who was next, are you on the list, that would have prevented some of the discriminatory things that happened.

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Tom Finn (02:35.758)

Yeah, I love that you're going back to Denny's 30 years ago, because the young listeners are saying, I'm sorry, what are you talking about? What's a list? Are you talking about paper and a pencil? And you put your name down? There are some young people scratching their head going, I have no idea what she's talking about right now.

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Shirley Engelmeier (02:43.968)

Okay, your notes app on there. Who's next, Tom? Are you next? I'm going to follow down the list here.

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Tom Finn (02:56.974)

Yeah, but I think your point is well made, which is it starts with a lawsuit around discrimination, and you were involved in reviewing it and getting to a better place of understanding. So were there some key milestones over the last 30 years? Were there some things that pop up in your mind that make you think, wow, that's where we started, and we've kind of moved forward and evolved as a country over this period of time?

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Shirley Engelmeier (03:19.85)

They're from a, I'm not a lawyer, but I'll make a legal comment here. The big payouts for certain classes of people, that doesn't happen anymore. And that's because of a big change at the Supreme Court. How we've always approached this in our taglines, inclusion is a business strategy. And so we had this really radical idea that if you create a culture of inclusion and you have diverse representation that mirrors who your customers are or who your customers, you want your customers to be, that that's why you should do this work. And so we moved entirely from our infancy 23 plus years ago, completely away from that. We were quite alone in the wilderness on that and people thought that was a refreshing approach. So that's what we'd been operating with. Huge milestone was, and if anybody's just listening to this, I'm pointing to my right. George Floyd was murdered like, you know, five miles that direction from where I am in Minneapolis. I'm not trying to bring that trauma up. I'm trying to say that there was a global awakening. We were on lockdown from COVID and special attention went to that.

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At that time, what happened was two things. The language changed. And we'll come back to the language after I answer this question for you. The language changed and all of a sudden it was D, E, and I. Okay, we work with a lot of leaders and I in particular work with a lot of leaders. They were already confused on what the difference was between inclusion and diversity. And now we have an all -encompassing acronym which needs to be separated and teased apart for them to understand what's happening. It was the most profound work that I think that we've done because it seemed like there was an opening for understanding. Now, what's been happening about the last year tends to get attributed to the SCOTUS ruling ending affirmative action.

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What's really happened is, in my opinion, and I wrote an unanticipated book to address it, was that the entire landscape looks like there's organic pushback against this work. And we refer to it as inclusion, diversity, and equity. And I can explain where belonging goes in that. And the pushback isn't real. It's a group of think tanks and leaders who have been working behind the scenes to bring forward disinformation. One of the core premises of that disinformation is that white men are discriminated against broadly. We'll just pause on that now, but bringing it forward in a way that it looks like, this doesn't work. we have to change what we're doing. Do I think there's opportunity for tweaks? Absolutely. Do I think the work has to be for the purpose of business? Yes, that's the only way it has staying power. Do I think that there are some white men that have been discriminated against? Yes, but nothing in the data says that it is broadly an issue. So that's a lot and I'll pause there and see where you want to go.

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Tom Finn (07:04.366)

Yeah, look, let me try to recap that. So if we go back in time, we've got lawsuits that were heightened to some behavior changes in organizations to get people to be more aware. So, okay, that's a good first step. George Floyd was a burning platform for everybody to see that there are some major issues still going on in this country and, quite frankly, around the world as it relates to the color of our skin. And so, that piece I think we all kind of get. The next piece starts to get a little murky. And here's where I want to go with this. When you start to look at 2024, and we're recording in 2024, you've got Ford that came out and pulled back on DEI. Lowe's, the home improvement retailer, came back, pulled back on DEI. Harley -Davidson came back. Tractor Supply, Molson Coors, beer company, came back and pulled back on DEI. So what I'm trying to get my head around is what is the feeling out there of DEI, DEIB, inclusion, what are we gonna do here that really does elevate everybody, no matter what your background is, where you're from, what color your skin is, what language you speak, what your gender options are, all of that should be set aside and we should all be sitting at the same table. It's just not that way today.

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Shirley Engelmeier (08:29.246)

Yeah, and I'll before I answer, you know, what's happening or how we got there, I do want to just do a quick overview of how we see the terms, because I think the language is really important. And when, and when we talk with organizations, we say, creating a culture of inclusion where everybody's voice can be heard to drive business success is important. I call that like the top of the funnel. And I'm using my hands for those of you listening.

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And C-suite in particular get that. It drives innovation. Inclusion, you know, drives innovation, productivity, engagement. It helps you keep your best talent. That all makes sense for business. And then we think of this in an equation, Tom. If you add a plus to, there are dimensions of difference that we have here. You said earlier, piece of paper. Surely people weren't even born that are listening to this. When Denny's, that's ancient like dinosaur times. Okay, so there's those dimensions of difference. And we're just gonna know that if we're breathing, we have bias. Okay, so we all have bias towards that. So we have to stay self -aware. If we do those two things, then that will result in equity and the feeling will be, I feel like I belong because people are actually valuing it. Now, if you look at each of those as that relates to business, one of the things, and I'll start, I'll go both ends of this continuum. So one of the things that happened when DEI flew across the global stage is people started to glob them together. Don't do it. Why do you need a culture of inclusion? Because not one group has the best ideas. Why? You're not going to ask people like me to sell to Gen Y, to sell to Gen Z. Why do you need dimensions of difference? Because the largest growth in the U .S. economy is multiracial, multiethnic people. By 2026, they'll make up $7 trillion or 30%. Do you want them as customers and then let's equity take care of itself. So there are players and think tanks in what I call the disinformation campaign. And, and so when you look at those six that have fallen Ford, Lowe, started tractor supply, John Deere, Lowe's, I, and I think Ford and Molson Coors were the latest. Those are from the result of a what I call a fringe ideologist who said things like Harley Davidson, and this isn't a quote, but it's a paraphrase. Harley Davidson is spending its money for sex changes for children.

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That is a complete piece of disinformation. It is a complete, let's just call it, it's a lie. But it whips up fear. And then the platform that's used to push against this is X. And they get people to threaten that they'll boycott. Now, I can't explain to you why they want to shut it down.

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And I've been writing quite a bit about organizations. Don't cower. Start publicly stating in the same way you sell Coors beer. What's your PR campaign and why you're doing this. Communicate internally why you're doing this. Like if you get more people to drink your beer, you're going to have more. I don't drink beer, so I don't even know what you call it, but more flavors of beer. You're going to have cheaper prices. You have, you know, better accessibility. that's where we are now. And it's like the person who is behind this, his name is, he's a 35-year-old young man, Robbie Starbuck, and he's bragging on X. I don't even have to go after him now. I just have to say their name and they fall. Why are these companies so afraid? And so if you go back to, I'll tell you, my Disney story, if that's okay to go there. was in 2023, I was working with the leadership team, literally in Orlando. And if you've been there, you get off the plane and you go, wow, I feel like I'm in Disney World already. Every single thing here is Disney this, Disney that. So in the executive training with the CEO, I made like a 42 second comment, which was this - I can't believe a governor of Florida, but they knew, would take on their largest corporation, Disney, in anti -woke. Because all woke means is to try to attract a multiracial, multigender workforce. And the C -suite went, People at the C -suite don't do that. And I got berated only one other time in my career have I been lit up like this about being political. I wasn't trying to be political. I'm just saying I didn't understand the rationale in doing that, which led me early this year to say, where the heck is this coming from? This kind of response and I'll pause there. Then I found out what had been happening for the last five years out of sight for the rest of us.

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Tom Finn (14:42.51)

Well, look, that Disney issue was a big issue. In mean, that took global stage for a number of months as the state of Florida and Disney tried to work through their differences of opinion on this topic. I think the challenge for the regular person who's not in the Senate, who's not in government, who is not in the C -suite of a Fortune 500 company is just trying to understand where they fit. I think even for me, white male, I'm trying to figure out how do I fit into D, E, I, B, or I, and D, or E, and where do I fit? How can I be a supporter of everybody no matter what your background is? And how can I also have my seat at the table? And I think that's the way most white males are feeling. There's always going to be fringes on the bell curve. I get it. I'm not saying all. I'm saying there are there are a lot of people out there that wanna do the right thing for everybody. And that's good for business, right? That is good for a small business, a medium-sized business, a global enterprise, as you mentioned. So how do we peel this thing back and say, everybody gets the table, and I mean everybody, and we all have the same opportunities?

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Shirley Engelmeier (15:45.182)

Right? Yeah, and I think it's an excellent question for many reasons, because that has been a typical response that white men feel excluded. That's when you're focusing on the D, the diversity. When you're focusing on the I, inclusion, which says, I want to hear what you have to think, Tom, because you're the one that does the job. I want to see what innovative ideas you have. Everybody knows what it feels like to be excluded. Everybody knows what it's like to have their eyes rolled at them in a meeting when you've just come up with some brilliant thing and then maybe your colleague says it and they go, wait a minute, I just said that and nobody noticed. And so if you separate them completely and say, we have to have a culture of inclusion, business is changing so fast, how can we make sure we have as many diverse opinions? We don't care at that point about race, ethnicity, a sex sexual orientation. We don't care about any of that. We're just talking about how we can do the best possible work. I think in the last five years, I've personally facilitated like for 22 ,000 leaders. And what I find them coming in, maybe like a little, most of them are white, okay, executive teams and no ding on that, just stating the obvious. And they kind of come in with their arms crossed like this. And then they go, yeah, wow.

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Inclusion is kind of how we run our business. Yeah, I get that. I get why you start with the culture of inclusion. And then if I start with the culture of inclusion, we have one of these taglines that say, shouldn't inclusion be for everyone? Hello, yes, it is for everyone. And then you help leaders understand it's a way for them to maximize what's happening on their own teams without spending a dollar. If you use these globally validated behaviors we have, you can improve innovation 20%. You can double your engagement. Your employees are four times more likely to stay. That's how we get people to be part of the conversation. And I know the voice in the wilderness about business-centric. Sometimes we still are that because when you go off in all of these different groups, it becomes highly confusing.

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Tom Finn (18:27.064)

So I want to take us to a place that you can help me explain another very specific example. The Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM as they're better known, announced this year in around July that it would remove equity from its DEI framework. So they said, essentially, we're going to call it I&D, Inclusion and Diversity, and that equity piece is out.

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We're just not going to address it. We're going to get it out. And so SHRM went from DEI to I&D, and they received a tremendous amount of pushback around this kind of idea that they're removing the equity piece from all sides, from all types of people and all types of backgrounds. Help us understand that. Help us understand why, perhaps, equity was removed from your perspective. And if it matters or doesn't matter, so that we can better understand where they're going.

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Shirley Engelmeier (19:26.814)

Yeah, and let's go back to the equation thinking. You want a culture of inclusion, you have to get that concept first so people can understand, I know how I was raised, I know who I've around. So yeah, I have to raise my awareness on dimensions of difference. And if I do those two things, equity will be the result. That is a very different thought process than some clients have.

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You know what? I've been doing this for decades. I don't want to have an academic discussion on equity. It's too complex. It's just too complex. I think, sure, superb organization, massive failing when DEI came out that they weren't beating the drum of. Here's what diversity means. Here's why having representation of differences makes sense for you as a business. Here's what inclusion means. Here's what equity means. It is a, think the loss of the E is a travesty, not because the E's gone, but because they didn't use their platform to educate people for the last five years. So E being gone looks to me like a cave to the ideologues and the fringe thinking around this. And they are probably, at least from a U .S. perspective, the best one who could have kept saying, here's why we need a culture of inclusion. Here's why it includes you, Tom. Here's why diversity of thought, which can be both of us are white people, can be all white people. But here's why we need diverse representation, because we're going to sell more goods and services. And if they had done that all along, if then they had chosen to go to I&D, which by the way it was for us in 2010. It's not a new concept. You know, then it wouldn't have seemed for me, I think it's a cave. And I understand it's a cave in the same way these six companies just caved. It's a cave in the way the Claremont Institute like I went to all these states like we go back to Florida and Disney. Imagine how complex it would be. I've never been a legislator, but a legislator to get a big bill through. And what I say to you is, hey, you want to go against anti -DEI? Hey, Tom, here's the playbook. They got it done in a month. That couldn't possibly happen unless they had the playbook and the votes so that there is this what I would call ideology that's not in the mainstream, that's made its way to mainstream in general. And that was one of the things I think sure must have had a press up against them. I don't know what the backstory is. I personally was really disappointed again, not just because equity's gone, but people never really understood what what it was to start with. So how can they know how bad to feel when it's gone?

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Tom Finn (22:48.29)

Yeah, I agree with that. I think if you highlight a part of your conversation there, which is let's go back five years and where was SHRM and where were they in defining this space and owning the space? And I tend to agree with that. If you're an HR and you're a holder of a SHRM certification, I get it. There are certain companies that look to the HR profession and say, you should have a SHRM certification. But the reality is they have not done the job in my opinion in the last five years that they should have done to not only define diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and all the other terms that we want to come up with in this space, but really be a thought leader in developing HR into a strategic role. That's another piece that we don't talk about a lot, because everybody's afraid to talk about HR people in a negative way because they want a job at some point, and they certainly don't want to stand in front of a microphone and say they're doing it wrong. But they're doing it wrong.

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Shirley Engelmeier (23:32.039)

Excellent.

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Tom Finn (23:46.618)

And we've come a long way as business operators and as a community and as a country, but this role needs some support in the future and SHRM should be that support. It doesn't feel like they're there just yet.

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Shirley Engelmeier (24:02.624)

Well, Tom, you're probably like my colleagues and I inclusion and say we're completely unemployable in business anymore because we say what we think and we'd be we'd last like 18 hours there and they'd show us the door. So so I agree with you that SHRM, SHRM needs to see here would be my take. They need to see the big picture when you get into things like the the, you know, the weeds, let's just call it that. When you get into the weeds on dimensions of difference and that's what you're leading with, you've lost the vast majority of people. I cannot tell you the number of ahas that I've had and I'm repeating myself, but where some grumpy people would come into these executive sessions, we've heard all this, why do we need this? And then they go, thank you for starting with inclusion. Now I realize how complex this is for us as a business.

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Tom Finn (25:08.482)

Well, it is a complex topic, that's for sure. And everybody has an opinion on it. I think that's the other portion of this discussion. So for those folks that are pushing back on DEI, you're saying it's a small community of individuals led by certain folks that are really just pushing back on this concept. What do you say to them? How do we educate everybody in the same way so that we can all have the same understanding?

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Shirley Engelmeier (25:37.3)

You know, I'll tell a personal story about this. When I realized what was happening in January, you know, I had this situation with the client saying, you know, our largest client for the year, saying, well, you know, we're not focusing on that anymore and we were ready to go to contract. And then January 24th, I read an article by Nick Confessori in the New York Times that he'd gotten a Freedom of Information Act to try to find out what the Claremont Institute was doing. Claremont Institute traditionally has been seen as a conservative think tank. Well, they moved from recommending policy to trying to drive an agenda, an ideology that said, from the president, I'm not making this up, America is meant to be a Christian nation and DEI is a mortal threat to America. Now we know what the threat is. It's the diverse representation. When I on that day read that article, like my hair spontaneously combusted, it was, I can't even believe this. I went from saying I want to write a white paper to writing a book and the reason and with urgency, like I was possessed day after day after day to say, why is this happening? Stop pretending like it's organic or stop saying it's only about the Supreme Court ruling last year. It's not. You got, remember this anti-CRT thing that came from a different place. That came from the Manhattan Institute. Now we have project 2025. Four of the six goals that they have in Project 2025 are to dismantle DEI. They seem to be really hung up on sexual orientation and race. So you have this, all this disinformation coming from all of these places. I just keep standing for my place in the world to say, wait, excuse me. This is for business. This is about creating a culture of inclusion to have your best performance. I'm not the majority voice yet, but that's why I did that. I'm doing as many podcasts with excellent hosts like you. So I can say, wait, let's go back and reevaluate it. And when else did these companies like Ford, are you kidding me? Or allowing, I don't know what you call X tweets, but I'll call them the tweets that are having them cave within a week to changing something that's central to their business.

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Tom Finn (28:34.862)

Does seem like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to some new information or some pushback. When you look at policy for organizations, policy tends to move very slowly. Certainly the larger the organization, the slower that a policy would change. And it feels like over the last, let's use your number, 30 years or so, policy has changed, likely in the right way, for organizations to be more.

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Shirley Engelmeier (28:49.184)

Yes.

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Tom Finn (29:04.59)

Right? And for the hiring of lots of different backgrounds in a diverse workforce, which we all know, I mean there's study after study after study on this, that a diverse workforce breeds greater profitability, more customers, more depth within industries, I mean you name it, we can give you the studies on it. However, there seems to be this this pushback in 2020, 20, excuse me, 2024, which I'm sort of scratching my head going: Where did this come from? And what I'm hearing from you today is Claremont Institute and some others have really pushed an agenda that is starting to get to the tops of these organizations like Ford. It feels like for me, in that same bucket is the leadership at SHRM and many other companies. I don't mean to just pick on those two. I'm just trying to give examples.

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Shirley Engelmeier (29:56.287)

Right.

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Tom Finn (30:03.791)

And so I guess the question really is, as we sit here, this year, where do we go from here? I mean, how do we, if I gave you a clean sheet of paper, Shirley, and said, all right, look, draw this thing up for us and be fair to everybody, what would you do?

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Shirley Engelmeier (30:15.112)

Yeah, here's what I would start with. I'd start with what I think is the most impactful metric on this. And it's work that, you know, McKenzie's done and they've done with Bleenin. And McKenzie looks at, you know, companies within their own industry. Companies that have diverse representation and we never mean unqualified, which always comes up, but we have diverse representation at the leadership level. Outperform companies within their own industry by 39 % across all metrics. That's when you separate it for women in leadership or people of color. So let's just pause for a minute and say: Would you like that to happen for you? Would you like the effects of our global study that Inclusion Inc. did with SMU's Executive School of Business and Dr. Miguel Canones that says when you use inclusion behaviors, we haven't talked about, we talked about diversity in the first one, this is only inclusion. Again, you'll drive innovation by 20%. Do you want to do that? Do you want your employees to be four times more likely to stay? Yes and yes. OK, so why specifically for you do you need to tap people that are different than your traditional customers? And doesn't it make sense to have people that know and understand their buying habits internally? Yes. So we have three big yeses to business. Now let's talk about from and that's way oversimplified. However, if you looked at it from that business perspective, then your point before about you could have HR business partners, true business partners, supporting the business in a way that's going to help them get the talent, keep the talent, train people on how to be effective, inclusive leaders. And I would say this, I feel as if those of us who are doing the work I never ever considered that there was anything like was happening covertly was happening because I was operating under this failed assumption. finally businesses get why it matters. Finally they've stepped into this. And so you just have to go back to this would be my thing for sure for Ford. What is the internal reason why this matters to you for business? Get your brilliant PR people like they're selling cars or beer and tell everybody why you're doing it. And then do it and keep repeating it over and over. So when this push comes that we're going to boycott you, you can be as active on X saying, yeah, but you don't really know the whole story. So somehow I don't know what event I was at, but it was like somebody's older uncle, like 82. I hate this DEI. I'm thinking, wow, that cultural war has hit you. I know he didn't know what it was, but he hated it. And so that's kind of the demonizing on that. We just have to say, okay, let's set that down. This is a business enabler for you for high performance.

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Tom Finn (34:02.2)

Yeah, look, I would tell you, no matter what side of the court you're on here, DEI is good for business. look, the studies all prove it out. If we are diverse, if we are inclusive, if we treat people, it just comes down to treat people the right way and give everybody a fair opportunity. That's really what it comes down to. Let's not overcomplicate this thing. That's what it is. And I think every company can get behind that. There are certainly those that have gone too far on one side and certainly those that have gone too far on the other side. And I think there's examples of that. But if we can find a way to meet in the middle, we can make business better, our communities better, our country better, our world better. And I think that's all something we can get behind.

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Shirley Engelmeier (34:44.49)

Great.

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Tom Finn (34:45.912)

Shirley, thanks very much for being on the show with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure to take what can be a very difficult topic and put it in front of everybody and really get behind some of the details. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you? And then I do want to know about your book as well that we can get out to folks.

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Shirley Engelmeier (35:05.086)

Yeah, if those of you who are on video, we made a really scary cover because I think it is really scary. know, you can see Tom, it's got, you know, this really bold, deliberate disruption unraveling the anti -DEI ideology and getting back to why DEI works. That's on Amazon. And this time we chose just to do it as an ebook. If you want to get in touch with us, you know, one of the things that we just started to do is to share tips, friends, those kinds of things, particularly in this space of how to combat the disinformation. It's www.inclusion-inc.com in the know. Or if you just want to come to us and just Inclusion-INC.com and see what we do.

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Tom Finn (35:52.302)

Yeah, beautiful, and we'll put all of that in the show notes. So those of you driving do not have to pull out an old school pencil or a piece of paper and try to write that down. Shirley, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for the work that you do to make everybody's lives a little bit better. And I think bringing awareness to this topic and really trying to understand it from every angle is important, like I said, for our businesses, our communities, our country, and certainly for our children out there that are gonna have to live in this world that we create for them. So thank you for the great work that you do and appreciate you being on the show.

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Shirley Engelmeier (36:27.262)

It's a privilege. appreciate the rigor that you come to this subject with. So thank you so much.