Shirley Engelmeier featured on Human Capital Leadership Podcast
Sep 12, 2024
1 min read
In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Shirley Engelmeier about building inclusive cultures to drive business success.
Shirley Engelmeier, founder of InclusionINC, has been a pioneer in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for over 25 years. Since 2001, Shirley has guided Fortune 500 companies and emerging organizations in developing and implementing DEI initiatives that enhance employee engagement, productivity, and innovation. A passionate advocate for the profitability of DEI, she addresses anti-DEI pushback with extensive research, emphasizing its critical role in modern business strategy. Shirley shares her insights in books for c-suite leaders, aiming to foster truly inclusive workplaces.
DEI as a profitability driver, with research used to answer anti-DEI pushback—what exact metric did Shirley Engelmeier’s InclusionINC track across Fortune 500 clients since 2001: engagement, retention, or innovation revenue, and over what timeline? Anyone weighing some of the best AI tools for people analytics should ask that before trusting a dashboard.
Her point about DEI being profitable, not just fair, made me nod. I watched an ERG at my old company boost retention, though leadership only listened when the numbers backed it. It reminds me that early habits matter—my nephew uses a cursive handwriting worksheet generator to practice focus, and I wonder if small daily practices shape how we approach difference. Culture is built in little things.
The point that inclusion work has to be tied to business outcomes is the one that actually gets leadership to listen. One thing podcasts under-use is the clip, though: a forty-second excerpt with a caption travels much further than the full episode link, and it uses audio you already have. That is what I use Reference to Video for - feed it the audio plus a reference frame of the speaker and it keeps the look consistent across clips, so a series of excerpts feels like one channel instead of random uploads.
I hadn't really connected DEI work to game dev culture before, but after reading about Shirley Engelmeier's approach to inclusive cultures and its link to business success, I'm thinking a lot about how small indie teams can build that same foundation early on — this Iron Nest roadmap page
I really appreciated how Shirley connected DEI directly to profitability and innovation—especially the way she counters anti-DEI pushback with solid research. That’s such a needed message for leaders who still see inclusion as soft rather than strategic. By the way, I keep a free transmission fluid reference guide I like to share: https://transmissionfluid.net/