The Next Evolution of DEI

[0:00:18] John Lynch: Alright. We've hit 11 AM Eastern. So, I think I can see a few people joining right now. I'll get started so that we can make sure we have enough time to cover everything we have on the agenda today. So thank you for joining.

Hi, everyone. My name is John Lynch. Welcome to today's webinar on the next evolution of DEI. I lead communications content at TalentNeuron, so I'm here to serve as a touchpoint. I'll help get questions over to our panel and introduce us here.

As we have people joining, I'm sure we'll start to see folks in the chat. As everyone gets warmed up, I'll move on to talk a bit about what we're going to be doing today in terms of your webinar experience.

So, today's session will last about 45 minutes. We have a presentation and Q&A — thirty minutes of presentation and about fifteen minutes of Q&A.

This is the webinar room that you can see in front of you. As I mentioned, during the webinar, you'll have a chance to submit questions and make comments using the Q&A feature in the top right-hand corner. We encourage you to ask questions as we go, and we'll try to get to some as we run through. However, at the end of the session, we'll have time set aside.

For reference, on the question front, any questions or comments you submit today are completely private and confidential. We're not going to repurpose or republish any of that content anywhere. So we want this to be an environment where you can ask questions and get valued feedback from our panel.

In the document section on the right, you can also download the presentation slides and some of the materials we're discussing today, including some data sources.

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So, onto our speakers a little bit. I'll give a light introduction here, but these are the three representatives of TalentNeuron's strategic consulting team. Our team is a group of expert and deeply experienced practitioners. We partner with TalentNeuron clients to navigate complexity and develop SWP workforce transformation initiatives, with the goal of helping them build a future-ready workforce.

So we have three members of our team today: Erica Lee, Lynne Mayers, and David Mendelsohn — three senior consultants from our team with a combined fifty-plus years of experience.

Thank you, Erica, Lynne, David, for being here. Erica, did I cover everything?

[0:03:33] Erica Lee: You absolutely did, John. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. And good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you sit on the globe. Welcome to today's webinar. We know we are all in a similar place trying to figure this out. Very similar to 2020, when DEI took a different front seat differently. The one thing we all know and guarantee is change, and how we navigate that change and how we, as leaders of talent management, talent leadership, HR, and strategy, respond is uniquely challenging. No one will manage this in the same way. Some will shift drastically while others may wait quietly.

We have a unique opportunity to reimagine this work and adapt to the dynamic disruptions of technology, capability, and opportunity. We're all recalibrating. And the principles that we're going to discuss today are fundamental and remain critical components of talent management to foster inclusive workplaces that leverage perspectives for organizational success. Research has shown that robust talent strategies are linked to improved financial performance, and the extent of this correlation cannot be ignored.

The implementation and context we will discuss today around the evolving practice for dramatic change is focused on evidence-based talent practices, leaning into ROI and buy-in, and ensuring we review with some tactical information and advice.

So, John Lynch, let's move into what's been happening in this space. Our next slide highlights what is ultimately a period of disruption, but it presents a unique opportunity to reassess and realign our DEI initiatives. It's a chance to address relevance and see the potential for growth and improvement. Embracing discomfort during this time is, in fact, a sign of growth and a necessary step towards a workplace where we all thrive.

So, if you follow the news and you're staying connected to the world of talent management, you've likely seen the headlines. The trajectory of efforts is shifting globally, and some of these examples provided here just give us a glimpse into this change. All these headlines primarily originate in North America, but their impact resonates worldwide.

Whether it's activist investor intervention, corporate program rollbacks, public backlash and boycotts, legal challenges, or DEI efforts rebranding, these headlines exemplify some of that change. From a public backlash standpoint, we've seen organizations decide to terminate initiatives or restructure supplier programs or other efforts that have led to backlash and legal scrutiny, investor uncertainty, and subsequent efforts to reevaluate how they approach the next steps.

We've seen companies face legal challenges around policies and training, leading to reevaluations of implementations with financial impacts and rollback of initiatives, with stock drops and investor lawsuits highlighting this complex relationship between efforts and our corporate financial health.

Employee concerns have been voiced, with surveys indicating that employees have concerns about rollbacks of DEI, specifically when considering retention, workplace morale, and overall company culture. This underscores the importance of maintaining practices that promote employee satisfaction and engagement.

Finally, we've seen rebranding efforts, and they've begun for many companies. Organizations are responding to this across a broad spectrum. So, Lynne, you started digging into this a bit. What did you learn in your deeper look into how organizations are responding to this?

[0:07:24] Lynne Mayers: Thanks so much, Erica. So, absolutely, we recognize that every organization out there is trying to figure out how to respond in an environment where things are changing — almost on a daily basis — and where our internal stakeholders have different perspectives on the risks.

On the one hand, we absolutely want to be protected from a legal standpoint, but we also want to protect our employment brand in the labor market. Candidates want to come to work for us, and we want to ensure our existing employees understand our positions so our levels of employee engagement and trust don't suffer.

We need to be mindful of our consumer brands as well, as the public is watching. It's a really tough tightrope to walk, and we get that it's a particularly challenging landscape in which to make decisions. Every path has real risks, and every organization has a different set of circumstances.

So, we certainly aren't prescribing a path here. That's why you see the spectrum on this slide of the various directions organizations are taking — from those on the left who are publicly stepping back, maybe because they've been a target of activist investors or for other reasons. Then, some are getting ahead of the risks and announcing publicly how they are approaching DE&I differently; others are doing that repositioning but not publicly discussing it.

It's really interesting. Things are changing so fast that organizations have pulled back, and they're now starting to reengage on the topic. On the right, others have always publicly stood by their DEI commitments.

There are so many news headlines out there. But since our core theme of this webinar is data-driven everything, I want to bring David Mendelsohn in to tell us a little about what the data suggests are the main trends.

I am checking to see if we are able to get David. Over to you, David.

[0:09:46] David Mendelsohn: The research that we pull out on the bottom here, a lot of these stats come from the DEI consulting firm Paradigm, and it really shows us how organizations are adapting their approaches to DEI. So this comes from a survey of more than 400 employers of different sizes and industries. And I think it tells a really, really interesting story here. So, starting with what's happening with representation goals and the communication around those goals, we're finding that 92% of organizations today are no longer sharing their representation goals externally. And that's just for the organizations that still have those representation goals. A lot of organizations have dropped those. So, those explicit goals are about how many people of different demographic groups we are looking to have in our organization.

So you can see that public communication is becoming a lot more cautious these days. And with that, we're also seeing a shift in language, something that many folks here have probably already observed. So, 39% of companies are changing the terminology they use to describe their efforts, moving away from the DEI label as that becomes more of a hot-button, contentious label to describe efforts. So definitely moving away from that this year.

However, at the same time, things like funding remain largely unchanged. So we're seeing that 58% of companies report no change to DEI budgets, and 23% are actually increasing funding. This indicates that the work is still happening—or perhaps the work is even happening at a greater rate—although it might be under a different label, in a different category, or under a different name.

And I think one of the most important and meaningful pieces for this conversation is that 89% of companies say they have already embedded DEI into their core talent practices. So these are things like manager training, fair decision-making, expanding sourcing pipelines, and more inclusive and expansive development pathways. So this is what we really see as the development and evolution of DEI and inclusive practices going forward. It signals a broader shift from positioning DEI as a standalone initiative towards being a foundational part of how organizations operate daily.

So we would love to get a pulse check on the audience now to get a sense of how you see your organization's approach to DEI shifting or not shifting with this live poll exercise because we would love to learn what you're experiencing and what you're seeing on the ground here as practitioners.

So we'll wait a few moments for some responses. Maybe John Lynch can let us know when we can call it quits.

[0:12:43] John Lynch: Yeah. We'll just give it a minute to remind everyone that this is a confidential poll, so none of this information will go anywhere. But I see some answers already. So 50% of respondents say we've reframed and renamed our DEI work or retained its principles. That seems to be a big theme here.

[0:13:01] David Mendelsohn: Yep. And I think that, to a large extent, that's following the data. So, reframing and renaming the DEI work, but the principles remain. The work continues, and maintaining an explicit DEI strategy and communication is also something we're seeing. And very, very little, it seems, on completely pausing DEI initiatives and sort of pausing and taking a step back.

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[0:13:36] John Lynch: Alright. So, I think we have another follow-up poll to get to in a moment. So we'll wrap this up now, and we'll continue with another poll shortly.

[0:13:46] David Mendelsohn: So with that, let's jump into the shift and the principles that we're seeing in this new evolution. What we're seeing is really an inflection point, as you're all experiencing. The world of DEI is changing, but that does not mean the work stops. It just means the way that we approach it has to evolve. It really means taking what we've learned and evolving our approaches to be even more impactful, sustainable, and aligned with where organizations and employees are headed.

This session is really about taking a step back, sharpening our definitions, and rethinking how we embed inclusion into the fabric of organizations. So, we'll focus on how to define the concepts clearly and evolve the practice in a way that's durable, future-ready, and impactful.

So, John Lynch, can we move to the next page? At its heart, DEI — or whatever label you may use in this day and age — is simply about creating environments where everyone has fair access to opportunity, is valued for their contributions, and has the ability to thrive. As we just saw a moment ago, some organizations are moving away from the term DEI, but while the language might change, the goal stays the same: creating workplaces that are fair, inclusive, and opportunity-rich.

Sometimes, there's this misconception that DEI is about special treatment. But when you really look at definitions like this, they're just about fairness. They ensure that every individual, regardless of background, can access the opportunities they need to succeed based on their abilities.

So that's what DEI stands for. It includes things like objective hiring, fair evaluations, and clear development paths. At the end of the day, it's just good talent management. These practices help organizations get the best out of their people.

Really, the move from DEI as a separate initiative to embedding inclusion directly into talent strategy reflects maturity, in our view. It's about making fairness and opportunity core parts of how companies operate — not separate programs on the side. And this, as we saw in the data, is what a lot of companies are starting to do today.

[0:15:57] Erica Lee: Yeah. David, so you're basically suggesting that even without the label, no matter where someone sits on the globe, this statement represents the foundation of a good culture and drives attraction and retention. Early research confirmed that this statement was in alignment with what companies and their employees expected in their company culture. What truly matters is whether you're building systems that create opportunities, drive performance, and ensure everyone thrives. So that's the essence of this work. Right?

[0:16:28] David Mendelsohn: Yep. Exactly. So when you take a step back, look at the kinds of practices that organizations are putting into place — things like flexible work schedules and more — and we'll get to that in a second. You see that these kinds of things aren't just DEI initiatives. They're just smart, modern ways to run a business. They help organizations attract the best people, keep people engaged, enable employees to do the best work, and ultimately drive organizational performance.

So, John, if we can move to the next page, we have a few examples to show the group. With these examples, it's helpful to recognize that many of the programs or policies companies invest in today are directly tied to creating fair and more supportive workplaces.

So, just to name a few, let's take things like flexible work schedules and remote options. The thinking here is that flexibility isn't just a perk; it's critical for attracting and retaining a diverse workforce, and it supports employees with caregiving responsibilities, health needs, or different work styles.

As another example, wellness stipends and floating holidays — supporting employee well-being in personalized, flexible ways — help people bring their best selves to work and show their organizational commitment to people's different life needs and situations. It helps everyone contribute fully, regardless of where they're coming from.

Another example might be maternity and paternity leave and paid volunteer time. These tap into those sources of meaning. So, providing meaningful support outside of work, whether it's family or community engagement, strengthens feelings of connection, loyalty, and purpose, which are really important drivers of employee engagement, commitment, and other factors like that.

So, all of these have something in common. They're not about checking a box. They're about building better ways to work, making opportunities more accessible, supporting career growth, and helping employees thrive — and they're all built on a few fundamental ideas. These ideas are not new, and they're not going away. They are the foundations of any strong, future-ready talent system.

So, on the next page, we're going to take a quick look at those core principles. These principles are meant to be at the heart of any sustainable, high-performing talent strategy. As I said, they are durable because they hold up over time regardless of leadership changes, market shifts, or political cycles. The reason for that is that they fundamentally drive employee engagement, retention, and importance.

Nothing that happens in the external environment is going to change that.

So first, starting with merit-based systems. We evaluate people based on skills, performance, and potential—not background, identity, or connections. This reinforces a culture of fairness and sets a high bar for excellence across the board. It's about creating processes that focus on what people can contribute, not where they come from.

Second, objective decision-making. Things like structured interviews, clear performance criteria, and consistent development pathways. Objectivity does a lot for an organization. It reduces bias, builds trust, and helps leaders make better, more defensible decisions.

Third, opportunity for all. This is where inclusion really becomes a structural part of how an organization operates. Durable practices are designed to ensure that anyone, regardless of where they start, can access growth, development, and upward mobility. It's not about favoring anyone. It's about ensuring that everyone has a fair shot.

Finally, trust through transparency. People are much more likely to engage and perform when they understand how decisions are made. Transparency in hiring, promotion, and pay processes is not just a DEI strategy. It's really a performance strategy.

So, when we think about building durable talent systems, it really comes back to applying these core principles. And that's not as slogans or sayings; it's really about embedding these as systems in how your organization operates from a talent and culture perspective.

One of the most powerful ways to do this is by grounding your practices in real evidence—using data and research to guide your actions rather than just relying on tradition or gut instinct.

So, Erica, would you mind walking us through how to translate these principles into practical and tactical practices?

[0:21:05] Erica Lee: Absolutely, David. Because it really sounds like objectivity is crucial. And as we mentioned earlier, relying on solid evidence rather than assumptions leads to better outcomes. One such application — and not the only one — is skills-based hiring, which you may be familiar with. But it's even more important to consider how it supports your data during recruitment.

So, using analytics to identify the best sources of talent and predict candidate success and performance management by implementing systems validated by research to improve your employee performance and engagement.

It's about thinking about talent development, offering training and development programs that have been proven effective through studies and are directly tied to skills and employee engagement.  

Using this evidence-based method helps boost morale and retention.

Again, there are so many efforts, and many of these efforts are grounded in skills. Skills are embedded in every aspect of these initiatives, and they ensure that you're effective and impactful. When we refer to evidence-based practices, we're emphasizing the shift from intuition, legacy systems, and gut feelings to strategies grounded in data, behavioral science, and measurable outcomes.

It's about designing talent systems that are fair, effective, and proven to work — not necessarily popular or easy. Our approach through a skills-based lens, we believe, is one of the most powerful and scalable ways to make talent systems more evidence-based by anchoring them in skills. Skills are the shared language. It's the way to evaluate people, grow them, and connect them to opportunities based on what they can do, what they should do, and what they can do — not based on just titles.

When practices are rooted in skills and backed by evidence, we achieve better outcomes, stronger hires, more inclusive advancement, and higher-performing teams. Like David said, it's not just about being fair; it's about being strategic. It's about creating systems that help your organization compete effectively.

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So, let's bring this to life because nothing helps better than a tactical example. In our next slide, we'll discuss making talent practices evidence-based and equitable. Talent acquisition is one of the best places to start. This is where the foundation is laid and where bias, subjectivity, and traditional signals like pedigree, for instance, can often creep in.

But there's good news. There are powerful, proven ways to design your sourcing and assessment strategy so you're more inclusive and more predictive of success. And that's what a skills-based approach — or, again, that evidence-based talent practice — enables you to do.

So, follow your eye with me to the sourcing side. The goal is to expand access without lowering the bar. These practices will help us look beyond traditional pipelines and find great candidates that we might have otherwise overlooked. You'll use labor market intelligence to expand your search. Data helps us find out where talent exists in overlooked regions, institutions, and career paths.

You're going to expand your early talent sources. A lot of companies recruit from the same few schools, so expanding your university or training program reach brings in new voices and often a better long-term fit. You're going to eliminate degree requirements — and I know this was a hot topic in the news, especially in the TA world. And it's where appropriate. This can be game-changing. If a role doesn't require the degree to be successful, taking it out opens the door for capable, overlooked candidates with matching skills.

Think about blind resume review consideration. It helps minimize unconscious bias by focusing on skills and achievements and including names, schools, or companies. Skills-based profile matching — using tools to match people based on demonstrated skills and not just job titles — helps identify a true fit even if someone may not look like your typical candidate on paper. For example, supply and demand can be out of balance in certain roles, industries, or functions. Highlighting the need to broaden our sources is also super important.

So now, let's swing to the assessment side. Once candidates are in the process, we need to be able to assess them fairly and rigorously. That means we want to take the guesswork out of the evaluation. So, how can we align structured interview guides? Everyone gets the same questions, focused on what matters for success, and aligned around skills to reduce bias and improve comparability.

Role-based and tech-enabled assessment simulations, case studies, and tools like coding and hackathons help provide clear, skill-based evidence of whether someone can do the job. Standardized evaluation rubrics ensure that hiring managers score candidates consistently based on job-related criteria.

Prescriptive interview training is also important. Even the best process can fall apart without training. Helping your interviewers recognize potential and apply rubrics is essential. You want to limit unstructured interviews. That "let's see if you vibe with the team" approach is probably not your best strategy. You want to reduce informal interviews to improve fairness and reduce reliance on intuition.

So, John, as we swing to the next slide, Lynne will focus a little bit more on how we bring this data to life and really make it digestible and understandable.

[0:26:47] Lynne Mayers: Thanks, Erica. Okay. My favorite topic is data-driven talent sourcing. The key to doing this is to use robust labor market intelligence to broaden your understanding of where you can get quality talent — identifying the right locations, schools, or organizations with the talent.

And we're showing here just some examples of the types of labor market intelligence you can get from us at TalentNeuron. Let's say you're hiring data scientists, for example, in Dallas, and you're finding the labor market challenging, and the data, top left there, validates that. Yes, it is. The hiring difficulty is nine out of ten for data scientists in that market.

Then, labor market intelligence can help you identify alternate markets with good-sized talent pools that aren't quite as competitive. On the right, you might see that Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Portland, and Providence are some good markets you can tap. Maybe not as large as Dallas, but the competition isn't quite as high. So maybe you'll have more of an edge in those markets.

The key is to identify the best markets based on the criteria that matter to you — not necessarily just the biggest markets. Maybe you care more about low-cost or manageable levels of competition. Maybe you also want to expand your perspective on what universities offer the richest graduate pipelines.

Labor market intelligence tells us, for example, at the bottom there, that in Texas, Texas A&M College Station and the University of Texas Dallas have really great pipelines for this particular type of talent. We can also help you look at which competitors have the most talent. This data helps you widen your lens on the sources you can use to attract qualified talent, which ultimately should increase the size and quality of your candidate pipeline in every regard.

And then, jumping to the next slide — once you've brought in the right people, the next challenge and opportunity is ensuring they grow, thrive, and stay. That means designing systems that support development and advancement for everyone, not just the most visible or the well-connected.

Several practices can help create more equitable, skills-based environments where employees have clear pathways to growth and leaders also have the visibility to support them.

For example, on the left: building a skills-based internal talent marketplace. We've heard from so many clients that the number one thing they're hearing on their employee engagement surveys is that employees don't feel like they have visibility into how to grow their careers in the organization — even in very large organizations that, in theory, should have a ton of career growth opportunities. It's just that so often, it's about who you know or just happen to have the right conversation at the right time.

So what we see is more and more organizations building internal talent marketplaces to address this challenge and connect employees to opportunities by matching their skills and interests with roles, projects, and gig opportunities in the organization. It's such a powerful way to retain great talent and unlock mobility and career growth for people who might otherwise be overlooked.

I'm just going to hit on a couple of others for the sake of time. Mapping transparent career pathways is another valuable practice. Most employees want to grow, but they don't know how. Skills-based pathways help them see what's next and what skills they need to get there.

Establishing formal mentorship and sponsorship programs can open up opportunities for all by intentionally connecting employees to development support based on their skills and aspirations — not just their background or how well they build informal networks.

Finally, ensuring that performance reviews are objective and skills-focused, which we all know, is critical because, too often, evaluations can be based on perception or personality fit. We can absolutely shift that by anchoring evaluation in demonstrated skills and behaviors, which helps reduce bias and also promotes more meaningful feedback. So it's not just fair — it's also more actionable.

So David, just for the sake of time — is there anything, since you've done a ton of work in this space as an IO psychologist, that you've encountered as a key success factor for making all of this successful and sticky?

[0:31:45] David Mendelsohn: Yeah. I mean, they're all so important, but I think if I had to pick one of them as one of the biggest opportunities for organizations today, I would say building an internal talent marketplace.

We see so many employees switching jobs and changing organizations because they don't see any opportunities in their current organization. They sort of hit a ceiling with their current skills. They want to be able to grow their skills and pursue more opportunities, and there is no structural way for them to do that.

And that is really what an internal talent marketplace unlocks for these employees. They say, "I have these skills. I want to grow in this way. What are the opportunities for me in this organization in a way that drives my own growth and helps the organization succeed?" So often, that is not the case because that is a structure the organization needs to support. The organization needs to set it up. And organizations are losing a lot of great talent because of that dynamic.

So this is all great, but if there were one thing I would love to see more organizations focus on today to drive retention, engagement, and performance, it's that talent marketplace. And with that, actually, it'd be great if we could jump to the next page, which is also about engagement and retention. So I think that's a nice segue.

When we talk about engagement, experience, and retention, it's ultimately about trust — trust that people feel seen, heard, and respected. These are not just engagement tactics; as I said, they're structural drivers of things like belonging, motivation, and performance.

So, first, let's talk about outcome-based recognition programs.

Recognition, as we know, is a really powerful driver of engagement and retention — but only when it's based on real contributions. So we want to be able to celebrate skill growth, collaboration, measurable impact — not things like visibility or personality. We want to elevate those who create value every day, sometimes quietly, and not just those who self-promote. And we all know that there are organizations and teams out there where people are rewarded for self-promoting rather than actual value.

Second, continuous listening with visible action. Surveys and feedback loops are useful only when they lead to action. I'm sure all of you have heard the term "survey fatigue," and I will get on a soapbox and say there is no such thing as survey fatigue. There is inaction fatigue. I would take a survey every single week, every single month, if I was confident it would lead to a tangible improvement in my world of work. But so many employees these days feel like employee surveys are just done to check the box, and they're not confident that it will lead to meaningful follow-up action that is consistently communicated. But when done right, it can really lead to increases in engagement — and not just engagement, but real changes based on the listening that is done. So this is a really important piece.

Finally, there are fairness audits across pay, promotion, and hiring. We know from the research that unfairness in career outcomes — especially important stuff like compensation and advancement — is one of the top drivers of disengagement and turnover. So, it's important to take a data-driven approach to ensure fairness across these things. We would analyze outcomes across skill levels, roles, and demographic groups to ensure we're catching patterns early and course-correcting before they undermine trust.

Ultimately, this is about building a culture where equity is proactive and structural rather than reactive. So, we've thrown a lot of practices at you today across sourcing, development, and retention, but these don't live in isolation. They're really the most powerful when they're connected in an integrated, skills-based talent strategy.

So, Erica, I would love to ask you to help us take these practices to the next level and show us how organizations are bringing it together end to end.

[0:35:50] Erica Lee: Absolutely, David. For us, it really comes down to three circles or views around workforce transformation. You'll likely leave us and only remember bits and pieces of our time together today.

However, evidence-based approaches provide a long-term path to understanding durability. It links the organization's long-term goals with the required skill sets to give you a solid plan. This next evolution supports a strategy that aligns the broader workforce with a shift toward transformation. David mentioned it. Lynne mentioned it. These changes are embedded in every piece of the puzzle. Skills are just one component, but they're crucial because they grow with your strategy.

When you focus on skills strategically with consideration and plans to support them with evidence in the market for today's and tomorrow's needs, then you become a great cross-functional partner with learning and development with other peers within the organization to concentrate on growth. And when everyone's involved in the workforce transformation, you make it essential. We have the capability on our TalentNeuron on-site with end-to-end strategic workforce planning capabilities for you to make those connections of engagement, redeployment, and, again, just keeping that factor of skills in front of you.

You're likely experiencing one of these stages, whether in understanding, planning, or transforming. John Lynch, I think we've mentioned that we will pause and pull up to ask another confidential poll question of the audience. Are we ready for that?

[0:37:25] John Lynch: Yes. We are. So, we have another quick poll. It'd be great to get a sense from our audience of where we are and what they're looking to do from this point onwards. So we've only got an idea of where folks are, but which of the talent practices we discussed today, or others that aren't on the list, are you currently implementing or planning to implement? So this would be a good moment to take a short break to see that.

Skill-based job architecture seems to be somewhat popular, so it should be interesting to see that already. Talent learning and development, of course. Okay. We'll just give this a few more seconds because we're a little tight on time.

Okay. We're already getting the idea that skills-based learning is at the forefront of everyone's mind, which is useful to know. Let me head back to the presentation here. We have a couple more things we wanted to touch on before we wrap up.

[0:38:30] Erica Lee: Absolutely. John, while you get that pulled up, I'll just start talking to remind everyone it comes full circle. In our next slide, we see news headlines. You're confirming in the poll that the variety of reports globally highlights the focus on skills. It's positioned organizations to adopt an evidence-based practice. Its emphasis on skills elevated these approaches and has informed internal and external capabilities to create bridges. It's prepared organizations in EMEA, Canada, North America, and across the globe to continue meeting and driving results while supporting learning components and retention. The market is confirming the trend. But David, everybody has to get some ROI and buy-in on these aspects of success. So, how do they make that part happen?

[0:39:21] David Mendelsohn: That's right. We all have to be talking about ROI and the business impact, and I think I saw some conversation in the chat earlier around measurement. So that's clearly on people's minds. So let's go there. We talked about what evidence-based practices look like. Of course, the question is, how do we actually build buy-in and improve impact, especially at a time like this, where we're all expected to show business value?

So, this is the part where the case for Erewhon becomes critical. And that's not just for DEI-specific initiatives but for any talent strategy meant to be sustainable and scalable moving forward. On the page here, we have a few examples. And I'll just call out a couple. These are not meant to be a comprehensive list, of course, but are meant to give a flavor for the things that drive impact and help build that business case.

One great example is high-performer attrition. This is all about tracking the voluntary exit rate of top performers. This is critical because losing your highest contributors impacts both productivity and culture, and it often signals broader issues regarding fairness, engagement, advancement, and, of course, ultimately, the organization's performance.

Another one I'll call out is promotion parity. Promotion parity is about comparing promotion rates across different demographic groups, and it's one of the clearest ways to assess whether advancement systems are truly fair and inclusive or if there are hidden barriers that need to be investigated further.

Finally, I'll call out a high-performance culture, which, in my view, is one of the ones that are most likely overlooked the most. These are things like: Are employees engaged? Are they aligned with organizational goals? Are they supported in performing at their best? This is another important piece of pulling the full picture together and being able to measure: Are we implementing practices that move the needle?

All of these are outcomes of great talent practices, and they directly impact the bottom line. The takeaway here is that the best way to drive buy-in is not necessarily to tell a value story but a performance story. You don't need to memorize these specific metrics; the metrics that work for your organization might differ. But the goal here is to always ask: What are we doing today that we can actually measure, and are we measuring the things our key stakeholders care about the most?

Fair, inclusive, talent-based systems don't just feel good — they deliver measurable, sustainable business outcomes.

[0:41:54] Erica Lee: Yep. David Mendelsohn, you're right. And you can't drive change with good intentions alone. So, to make excellent, durable decisions, we have to connect the work to the impact, and the ROI is how we do that. But we also need to not think about who we need to talk to and who we need to consider. The practices we've discussed today benefit all the levels that are going to be shown to you in just a moment on the next slide. It's really about ensuring that everyone wins. And when we get it right, we create value for our stakeholders and positive outcomes that impact the business significantly.

So think about how you're going to articulate your why. Communicate your purpose and goals with your executive team. Craft a clear message and develop messaging grounded in purpose with all your stakeholders around skills and really this evidence-based practice. Contextualize your message, then align your talent policies and programs. You certainly want to be able to establish the impact of continuous monitoring to ensure success with this evidence-based approach.

And when you think about these opportunities and consider them in your talent practices, it will benefit everyone involved. We're going to come back full circle here because nothing's valuable without data, and we're data people. And so, Lynne, you mentioned that a little bit ago, and we love being thought partners in this crucial work. So, Lynne, can you share a little bit about our capabilities in this help in this space?

[0:43:20] Lynne Mayers: Yep. Absolutely. So these are just some of the ways that we can help folks in this space, but they are by no means exhaustive. So please come to us with any questions or needs you have, and we'll work to share with you what we can do.

But left to right: assessing your talent practices. As you've heard David talk a lot about, we can help you apply that evidence-based lens to evaluate your talent acquisition and management practices and identify potentially problematic approaches that are not delivering value and impact. We also help you establish those ROI-based metrics to ensure that every practice delivers the organizational impact it needs to.

We've talked a lot about creating skills-first strategies. We can help you create a practical skills-based strategy and roadmap that meets your organization's needs, including establishing skills architecture as a key foundation for your skills-based practices and adopting skills-based talent planning, acquisition, and development strategies.

Then, build your data-driven talent acquisition strategies. We can provide labor market intelligence to help you create those data-driven sourcing strategies so you can broaden your lens and expand your pipelines. We can also help you revamp your job postings to increase appeal and lead with skills rather than years of experience or education to increase your reach to qualified talent.

And then finally, design an inclusive, business-aligned EVP. Whatever you do in this space shouldn't be separate from your employee value proposition and culture efforts. This is where things can get disconnected from talent and business strategy. Creating fair and inclusive workplaces is fundamentally about how you design and define your EVP. We can help you create an EVP that reflects your organization's strategic vision and employee experience — including your culture around fairness, inclusion, and meritocracy — and ensure your content is on point.

John, I will hand it over to you because I see we have just reached the eleven-forty-five mark.

[0:45:39] John Lynch: Amazing down timekeeping. Thank you, Lynne. So we have — I think we've answered quite a few of the questions that have come in through the chat and the Q&A as we've gone. Lynne, there's been a few questions about the practicality, and I think you've covered a lot in what you just shared and how we help organizations. But would you make any additional point about embedding these practices within an organization? If we have one question to ask, it might be that.

[0:46:10] Lynne Mayers: Yes. And I think it was a great question. And I think we have kind of hit on the core principles here. It really starts with ensuring that every talent practice we have is evidence-based- and data-driven. The most important thing is that it is aligned with our business and talent objectives. When we can show that link between everything we're doing from a talent perspective and how that drives our business outcomes and our business objectives, and then the third pillar, which is putting in place those ROI-based metrics to ensure those practices are delivering on their intended outcomes — that is how we embed. That is how we create durable talent practices.

[0:46:59] John Lynch: Amazing. Thank you. So, Sir Tim, we are in the middle of the time. If there are any questions we didn't get to during the conversations today, please share them, and we will follow up.

Thank you for your engagement, to everybody who asked questions, and thank you for being here. I wanted to cover a couple of quick things before we wrapped up. As the team has been discussing, we help organizations navigate complexity. That's really what we do. The strategic consulting team here at TalentNeuron helps answer all kinds of major issues. One of those major issues is figuring out how to build a future-ready organization.

In our next webinar in mid-May, we have two back-to-back sessions on May 15 and May 22, and we will be discussing and providing guidance on building that future-ready workforce. This is our Workforce Transformation Master Class. It's a follow-up from our Strategic Workforce Planning Master Class at the end of last year. Please register. Saumya, thank you — she just dropped the registration link in the chat. You can also find it under the Docs section in the top right-hand corner of your screen. We hope to see you there.

It's going to feature some of the team here. David, thank you. We'll be there.

And one more thing: today's webinar is eligible for HRCI program accreditation. This is your code: 702312. You can also find that under the Docs section.

Again, Thank you to our panel: Erica, Lynne, and David. We appreciate your time and expertise and thank you to our audience for making the time to be here with us today. Alright. New Chapter!

Thank you all.

[0:48:41] David Mendelsohn: Thanks a lot for being here.

[0:48:43] John Lynch: Cheers then. Bye-bye.

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