How to invest in all your people, in a politically contentious, post-DEI world. 

Career growth and leadership training must be re-designed to work for all individuals effectively. The sustained lack of representation in leadership today is proof that current systems do not work for everyone. This is not a “DEI” issue. This is a business imperative, given the ever-growing importance of top talent for company performance.  

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ("DEI") has rapidly emerged as a contentious focal point in 2025. The discourse has pivoted from DEI to MEI—emphasizing merit, excellence, and intelligence over diversity, equity, and inclusion. With political and activist investor  pressures, many organizations are completely distancing themselves from this domain.  Companies face pressure to remove DEI positions, initiatives, or even vendor relationships.  Walmart, Meta, and Amazon are examples of major corporations that entirely removed DEI  from their vernacular and operations. 

Yet this move - intended to douse political fires - will be detrimental to employee development and retention, which in turn will hurt companies’ bottom lines. There is a path to investing in all people in a way that works for everyone yet doesn’t cross an equitability line. 

In this article, we’ll address three components of this politically charged topic: 

  1. Growing and keeping top talent remains mission critical 

  2. Professional development requires deliberate redesign to serve all individuals 

  3. How to transform learning and professional development for universal effectiveness 

Growing and retaining top talent is mission critical

6 in 10 CEOs

Say retaining and engaging employees is the top priority

It is critical to continue supporting ALL employees, regardless of internal perspectives or external pressures facing “DEI” for 4 major reasons: 

  1. The continuously changing business landscape means that companies cannot afford to miss out on top talent
    [1]






     

  2. In a world where many companies are mandating return-to-office policies, retaining top talent has become increasingly crucial. This challenge particularly affects employees with family commitments or working spouses, for whom relocation creates significant obstacles. Such policies narrow the available talent pool when organizations need access to exceptional candidates, creating a strategic disadvantage in an already competitive labor market. 

  3. With the rapid evolution of AI, employee development is only becoming more important. In order to stay competitive in a time of automation, companies increasingly need a focus on the human skills required in leadership and critical thinking. 

  4. Lack of access to learning and career development [1] remains one of the top reasons people choose to leave an employer.  

  5. All companies know that replacing talent is highly expensive due to recruiting costs, gaps in productivity, and ramp up time of a new employee. Even conservative estimates show the cost to be 50-75% of annual salary [2].

[1]

[2] “Employee retention: The real cost of losing an employee,” Peoplekeep.com

Professional development must be explicitly designed to work for all people 

Data clearly shows that women and BIPOC populations are significantly under-represented in leadership positions today, with the drop off starting at early manager levels. Women make-up 48% of entry-level roles, but only 29% of C-suite executive positions. Promotions to a first manager role is 20% less for women than men. 

There are two logical potential reasons for the drop off and lack of representation in leadership. Either leadership and career development is not working effectively for these groups, or current leaders do not actually believe that women and BIPOC employees are as suited to leadership roles as men, and specifically white men. Few people are going to claim the latter. Therefore, we must conclude that current career paths and support systems are not working effectively.  

It is clearly a sound business strategy to help employees build their capabilities and careers in a way that actually works for all people. Otherwise, companies are missing out on huge groups of future leaders and top talent.… and on financial benefit. Evidence shows that more diverse leadership teams outperform [3] financially by more than 25%. 

Lack of representation in leadership means that certain groups of people have not historically had access to the required support to grow their careers. 

This broken rung is not a “DEI” issue, it is a top talent and business performance issue.

To address this gap, companies need learning and professional development that works for all. All employees benefit from access to skill-building and learning opportunities, including understanding what is required to reach the next level.

All people need to believe they can rise to leadership positions and belong there. Research shows women’s career aspirations drop off significantly within the first 5 years of work, and that women lack critical support from their supervisors during critical mid-career years, when aspirations and confidence either rises or erodes [6].

How to design learning and professional development for all 

How can companies thread this needle of investing in people, and doing it in a way that works for all people, but without preferencing under-represented populations that risks political scrutiny? 

Offering learning to everyone is one piece of the puzzle. A rising tide lifts all boats…. but how do you ensure there are no leaks in the boats, and that all the captains knew their boat had to be out in the ocean? 

Learning design must ensure that learning works for all. Not only for “DEI populations”, and not only for those over-represented in leadership today.  

There are four critical components to deliver optimal learning programs that will ensure companies build and retain all top talent.  

a) WHO: selection of participants

Some employers resort to offering broad and inexpensive learning solutions that are easily deployed at scale – mass learning platforms such as LinkedIn Learning or Coursera. Yet, few leaders would say access to mass online content was the key to their career success.  

Learning programs that truly transform capabilities and careers are more intensive – especially starting in mid-career - which typically means they are more expensive. Yet, these investments are critical to growth and retention of employees, resulting in financial success for the business.  

How should companies think about who to select for development programs?  

  • First – ensure everyone understands why the program is so critical. Share data about the impact of leadership programs and personal anecdotes broadly. Creating broad understanding and demand is essential to gaining participant buy-in and stickiness. 

  • Second – ensure nominations are not infused with bias. If you rely only on existing leaders to select participants, research shows there are biases that tend to inform how they assess performance or potential [7], including the criteria used for evaluations following gendered expectations. Peer nominations can be effective to supplement supervisor nominations. 

  • Third – invite applications more broadly. Leverage communication to organic cohorts, such as ERGs groups, to inform and invite applications, not only through existing business unit structures.  

  • Fourth – if you see a learning cohort that does not seem representative of your broader population, investigate why certain groups did not apply or were not selected, to ensure there was not any inherent bias in the nomination and selection process. 

b) WHAT is provided as part of the learning curriculum

The content should be carefully designed to meet (a) the future skills employees need to be successful – human and strategic skills as leaders, and evolving industry skills and (b) broader challenges that may hold back rising leaders.  

It is critical to understand what these challenges are, and how they vary by population. For example, we see significantly different aspirations to leadership and confidence by gender and by age group. For example, people who do the majority of caregiving responsibilities have different challenges and we broadly see that women receive much less guidance on navigating careers. 

The curriculum should address this mix of leadership skills, bridging the feedback gap, whole-person challenges, and guidance on how to progress in your career. This is required to ensure that all people receive the core components required to develop in their career and performance. 

Needs vary by individual and employer. External research on the barriers and challenges – specially for different groups - can be insightful, but internal surveying is also very helpful to inform curriculum design. At Ceresa, we use assessments and tools such as 360-feedback and goal setting to help inform overall curriculum design and program personalization. 

c) HOW learning is provided  

Several components of the “how” are transformative to ensuring the “what” has real impact.  

  • Personalization. Adult learning is most effective when personalized to the individual [8]. Most companies have a core set of skills or capabilities they would like to enhance across their people. Yet individual employees come with varying skills and talents, and therefore their gaps and growth opportunities vary. Providing the same curriculum to everyone not only misses the actual need but also reduces individual excitement and engagement. At Ceresa, we’ve always used data-driven approaches to personalization. This requires helping individuals understand their goals and assessing their current strengths and growth opportunities, including where they may have blind spots. This data can then be used to identify the right content and support they will need to grow.  

  • Mixed learning modalities. Different types of content are best delivered in different modalities. Individuals have different learning preferences. Combining modalities has been shown to be the most effective at balancing convenience with impact [9]. This is not only a blend of on-demand and live interaction. At Ceresa, we blend mentoring, coaching, training and peer learning. We blend written content, with interactive exercises and reflections, video, live sessions and peer groups. We also deliberately infuse a mix of live and self-paced content. Coaching and training can be highly effective to develop certain skills, but mentoring is also an impactful learning modality – especially for the nuanced types of leadership skills, navigating careers, and figuring out broader life challenges – where learning from someone with relevant professional and life experience is transformative. Mentoring should not be considered a benefit or separate than learning – it is one of the most effective and transformative modalities when done well.  

d) IMPACT: measurement of impact for the individual and the employer 

At Ceresa, we measure impact closely to ensure we deliver real value and help continuously improve our programs and products.  

For companies, tracking engagement and participation is the first step, but often too much of the focus. For learning programs to be sustained and create meaningful impact over time, the whole business suite needs to see and believe in the impact. That means tracking impact across:  

  • career growth 

  • performance improvement 

  • employee retention and engagement 

  • personal aspirations, confidence and wellbeing 

There are multiple methodologies for measuring impact across these different types of impact: 

  1. Longitudinal data compared with a control cohort: this is the gold standard. Showing changes in promotions, pay and performance over time, compared to a similar group who did not go through the same program is the ideal measurement of impact. This can be a group from the same company, or a control group selected from a platform such as LinkedIn. There are also external benchmarks on things like retention by industry which can be used as a comparison, if a control population is not possible. 

  2. Externally validated behavioral or performance shifts: assessments before and after programming can help measure skill or knowledge acquisition, but even more impactful are objective, third party measures of performance improvement in the workplace. Ceresa uses a 360 tool, with both quantitative and qualitative components to assess performance, and repeats this after a period of time, to assess changes. Internal performance reviews can also be reviewed to see changes in individual performance. Ideally the improvement measured is in specific areas of focus, or goals, agreed by the participant upfront.  

  3. Personally reported behavioral or performance shifts: asking individuals for their own sense of achievement and progress is a helpful measure. This can be through direct questions on what changes they have made, and/or by asking the same set of questions before and after to measure change.  

  4. Personal satisfaction: satisfaction with a program is not impact but typically has a high correlation and can prove a good indication of whether a program is working for the individual, and feels like something they value (rather than being forced to do). This, in and of itself, can help with retention and employee engagement. 

  5. Participant engagement: engagement is not impact, but impact cannot happen without engagement. Tracking and transparently sharing engagement can be an effective tool to ensure individuals are committed to the program. Ceresa highly recommends requiring opt-in commitment to each program (even if it is a nomination process). Tracking this on a regular basis also enables early intervention with anyone who is showing early signs of not engaging. 

  6. Anecdotal feedback: collecting stories and anecdotes of participants’ experiences can be a powerful way to bring to life the impact as you share the feedback more broadly with other leaders in the organization.  

The gold standard would be translating some of these measures into a direct ROI – a metric that can be used to inform CFOs and other business-focused executives of the value of continuing and growing learning programs for all. Data around retention can be directly translated to financial metrics based on your company’s cost to replace. Performance improvements can be translated through approximations of business impact. More general satisfaction and employee engagement metrics can be estimated using benchmarks for the business impact these metrics see (e.g., more engaged employees drive over 8% higher profit margins [13]).

About Ceresa

Ceresa helps companies keep, engage and grow all their top talent. Ceresa’s platform provides customized leadership development programs that blend coaching, mentoring, peer learning, assessments and on-demand content. Designed to support all talent in growing their best careers, Ceresa supports globally leading organizations such as Amazon, Dell and Walmart.

Anna Robinson is the founder and CEO of Ceresa. Anna founded Ceresa to ensure more people get access to the resources and support we all need to grow careers and lives of meaning. Anna was previously a partner at McKinsey & Company. Anna lives in Colorado with her three kids, husband and growing zoo of animals.

Footnotes

  1. “CEOs make employee retention and engagement their top focus of 2024,” Linkedin.com, 15-Feb-2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ceos-make-employee-retention-engagement-top-focus-2024-sbsne/. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].

  2. C. Charaba, “Employee retention: The real cost of losing an employee,” Peoplekeep.com, 16-Apr-2024. .

  3. S. Dixon-Fyle, K. Dolan, D. V. Hunt, and S. Prince, “Diversity wins: How inclusion matters,” Mckinsey.com, 19-May-2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].

  4. “Workplace loyalties change, but the value of mentoring doesn’t,” Knowledge at Wharton, 16-May-2007. [Online]. Available: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wharton-podcast/workplace-loyalties-change-but-the-value-of-mentoring-doesnt/. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].

  5. M. Brailov, “Job performance feedback is heavily biased: new Textio report,” Textio, 15-Jun-2022. .

  6. “The crisis of confidence: How women lose faith in their career opportunities,” Bain, 17-Jun-2014. [Online]. Available: https://www.bain.com/insights/crisis-of-confidence-women-lose-faith-careers-infographic/. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].

  7. “Why Most performance evaluations are biased, and how to fix them,” Harvard business review, 11-Jan-2019.

  8. K. Wozniak, “Personalized learning for adults: An emerging andragogy,” in Emerging Technologies and Pedagogies in the Curriculum, Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2020, pp. 185–198.

  9. Relias.com. [Online]. Available: https://www.relias.com/blog/how-to-meet-the-needs-of-adult-learning-styles. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].

  10. R. Linke, “Lost Einsteins: The US may have missed out on millions of inventors,” MIT Sloan, 16-Feb-2018. [Online]. Available: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].

  11. Oxfam, “Women of color shoulder unfair share of caregiving, a new Oxfam and Prosperity Now report highlights,” Oxfamamerica.org. [Online]. Available: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/women-of-color-shoulder-unfair-share-of-caregiving-a-new-oxfam-and-prosperity-now-report-highlights/. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].

  12. “From small steps to big wins: The importance of celebrating,” Psychology Today.

  13. Recruiter.com. [Online]. Available: https://www.recruiter.com/recruiting/the-financial-benefits-of-proper-performance-management/. [Accessed: 15-Apr-2025].