S03 E09
Data-Driven DEI: Policies That Attract and Retain
In this episode, Holly Danko reveals why DEI must be strategic and data-backed, showing how leadership alignment, employee feedback, and authentic culture practices help attract and retain talent in today’s workforce.
TL;DR
What you need to know from this episode
- Culture is a strategy, not a byproduct. Holly argues it should be planned as deliberately as business operations, starting with the founder, CEO, and executive team defining the vision, mission, and values before the whole people strategy is aligned behind them.
- Perks are not culture. A ping pong table and snacks are perks. Real culture is how you make decisions, how you treat people, and how you hold employees accountable to performance.
- Put company values into performance reviews. Holly's most concrete tactic is asking, in the performance conversation, whether an employee is living the values, which signals that culture is measured rather than just talked about.
- A DEI strategy is table stakes. Candidates now interview leaders about their DEI approach, so a company without one struggles to attract or retain talent, and in Holly's view does not deserve to succeed.
- Listen with numbers and with comments. Quarterly surveys, eNPS, and end of year check ins matter, but Holly reads team members' comments to get the real pulse, and a Google form works when budgets are tight.
Holly Danko has spent more than a decade in HR, and she has firm opinions about the gap between culture and perks. As Chief People Officer at Unison, a company in the residential real estate industry that helps homeowners access their equity without taking on additional debt or monthly payments, she has spent about four years building the kind of workplace people actually want to join and stay in. In the ninth episode of Season 3 of CultureClub X, host Nicole Patrick sat down with her to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the modern workplace.
The conversation rests on Holly's core belief: culture is not something that happens to a company by accident, and DEI is not a box you tick once a year. Both have to be intentional, strategic, and backed by data. Holly has had her thoughts on DEI featured in Forbes, Quora, and on several podcasts, and throughout the episode she keeps returning to one practical test for whether a culture is real: are you willing to hold people accountable to it?
The central question is deceptively simple. How do people leaders build a culture and a DEI strategy that genuinely attracts and retains talent, rather than one that just looks good on a careers page? Holly's answers move from the executive team down to the individual performance review, and back out to the tools leaders use to listen.
Why culture has to be intentional from the top
For Holly, the starting point is a mindset shift. Culture should never be a byproduct of how a company happens to operate. It deserves the same deliberate planning as any other part of the business, with a strategic plan of its own.
She argues that the work begins with the founder, the CEO, and the executive team deciding what kind of culture they want, then developing the vision, mission, and values and aligning the entire people strategy behind them. A high growth startup will land somewhere very different from a large established company, and that is the point: there is no default setting to inherit.
Leadership cannot delegate this. Holly is clear that the leader has to live culture and exemplify it every single day, while the people and HR teams instill it through onboarding, policies, procedures, and the way the company recognizes and rewards its team. In her framing it is a team effort, built on a plan and the discipline to work through that plan.
How do you scale culture without a copy paste framework
There is no company culture that can be lifted wholesale from another organization. Holly acknowledges that proven frameworks exist, pointing to McKinsey's 7S model and the iceberg model, but she insists they only work once they are customized for a specific company and its people.
More important than any framework is a distinction she wants every leader to internalize. Perks are not culture. A ping pong table and free snacks are pleasant, but they are not the thing itself. For Holly, culture is really about how you make decisions, how you treat people, and how you hold employees accountable to performance, and that is the foundation everything else sits on.
What holding people accountable to culture actually looks like
The most concrete idea in the episode, and the one Nicole singled out as the first time a guest had raised it, is building culture into performance reviews. Holly wants managers to ask, right in the performance conversation, whether an employee is living the company values and how they are instilling them across the company.
When people know they are being measured on values, the message lands: this matters, and it is not something the company says it likes and then sweeps under the rug for the rest of the year. Accountability, though, is the end of a long road. You cannot simply announce a set of values and start grading people. It takes an education process and an entire system to reach that point.
Why a DEI strategy is table stakes, not a nice to have
Holly does not hedge on DEI. A lack of DEI initiatives, or even a strategy, is in her view truly detrimental to a company, and never more visibly than today. The data on diverse workforces is abundant, she notes, covering profitability, diversity of thought, and reaching different customers, but the strongest reason is simpler: it is the right thing to do.
having a DEI strategy, having DEI initiatives, it's table stakes right now. You cannot succeed as a company if you don't have that, nor should you, in my opinion.
The talent market makes the stakes concrete. Holly says candidates now interview her, asking about the DEI strategy, whether there is a DEI committee, and what the executive team and board look like. People want to work somewhere they feel respected, heard, and able to be their true self, a shift she has watched accelerate through the pandemic and the move to working from home. Without a strategy, a company cannot attract talent, and it certainly cannot retain it.
She closes the point on education. Leaders cannot assume everyone already knows what to do, so teaching through outside speakers, community groups, and volunteering, alongside creating a safe space, is essential to making inclusion real.
How people leaders can keep listening despite the workload
Employees want to be heard and not feel like a cog in the machine, and Holly meets that with a deliberately data centric approach to people strategy. Surveys are the minimum. She tracks engagement and eNPS style metrics, but she is adamant that the qualitative data can matter just as much as the quantitative.
I love reading our team members' comments because that's where I truly get the pulse of the company.
At Unison, that listening runs from quarterly company surveys to an end of year people check in, where the people team divides and conquers to hold one on ones with team members and feeds what they learn into yearly planning. Holly treats collecting employee sentiment and engagement as table stakes, the same phrase she uses for DEI. And budget is no excuse: a Google form or an Excel spreadsheet will do when a team cannot afford a dedicated tool. With so many people working from home, the water cooler conversations are gone, and leaders have to embrace technology to get that feedback.
Are policies or culture the real driver of retention
Asked what leaders should focus on to avoid DEI related attrition, Holly gives an answer she admits could be controversial: policies are the least important thing. Anti discrimination and anti retaliation rules are a legal baseline every company should already have, so they are, again, table stakes.
What actually retains people is culture: an inclusive environment where employees feel respected, enjoy their work, and see different mindsets embraced. Differences, she says, are what bring new innovation and ideas to a company and its product. When Nicole raises authenticity and the dreaded check the box exercise, Holly does not hold back, calling it one of her pet peeve phrases.
I just feel like you're better off not doing anything if you're not really gonna commit to it and honestly ingrain it as part of your company culture.
Employees can tell the difference. A check the box initiative, far from retaining people, turns out to be a great way to lose them.
Who owns culture when HR are only the custodians
Nicole asks whether HR are the custodians of engagement and culture rather than the owners, and Holly agrees precisely. Custodians, yes; owners, no. Her role as Chief People Officer is to hold everyone accountable and to have the difficult conversations when the culture slips, but ownership has to sit with the whole company.
Culture initiatives fail, she warns, when they are treated as an HR initiative. It has to run from the top down and from the bottom up, with every manager, every leader, and every team member owning it and living it every single day. Leadership and HR educate the team on what the culture is and how it should be lived; everyone else has to carry it.
What continuous listening means for the modern workplace
The thread running through the whole conversation is listening. Holly's culture is intentional, her DEI is strategic, and her accountability is real precisely because she keeps collecting signal from her people and acting on it. The pandemic and remote work have only raised the stakes, pushing continuous listening further into the spotlight.
That is where an employee listening platform earns its place. When the informal cues of an office disappear, a structured pulse survey gives leaders a reliable way to hear sentiment, spot where culture and DEI are slipping, and turn comments into action. For Holly, the goal is never the survey itself. It is a workplace where people feel respected, heard, and able to be their true self, and the data is simply how leaders keep proving they mean it.
About the guest
Holly Danko
Chief People Officer, Unison
Holly is a people leader, employee development expert and an up and coming HR influencer who has a proven track record of building strong teams, and company culture. Prior to Unison, She has worked with organizations like Morgan Stanley, Novation Ventures, and SmithBucklin & Information, Inc. Holly is a seasoned HR professional with more than 10 years of experience in Talent Acquisition, People Operations, and Learning and Development.
She is also extremely passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion and has had her thoughts on DEI featured in Forbes, Quora, and on several podcasts. She is an alumni of University of Maryland and Penn State University.
Full episode transcript
Season 03, Episode 09 · Holly Danko with Nicole Patrick · 21 min
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of CultureClub X, powered by CultureMonkey. I'm your host, Nicole Patrick. CultureMonkey is a complete employee engagement platform that helps people leaders to measure and improve their workplace culture.
In the ninth episode of this season of CultureClub X, we have with us Holly Danko, Chief People Officer at Unison. Holly is a people leader, employee development expert, and an up and coming HR influencer who has a proven track record of building strong teams and company culture. Prior to Unison, she has worked with organizations like Morgan Stanley, Novation Ventures, SmithBucklin, and Information Inc. Holly is a seasoned HR professional with more than 10 years of experience in talent acquisition, people operations, and learning and development.
She is also extremely passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and has had her thoughts on DEI featured in Forbes, Quora, and on several podcasts. She's an alumni of University of Maryland and Penn State University. Holly, it's great to have you here with us today and welcome again to CultureClub's videocast on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the modern workplace.
Thank you so much, Nicole. I'm really excited to be here.
Yeah, us too. So before we begin, please just give us a little bit more information about yourself and your organization.
Sure. As you mentioned, my name is Holly Danko and I'm Chief People Officer at Unison. I've been here for about four years, and Unison is a company that works in the residential real estate industry. And we allow homeowners to access their equity without incurring any additional debt or taking on any monthly payments. And as you mentioned, I focus very, very heavily on diversity, equity, inclusion, creating an amazing place to work, talent acquisition, and a variety of other areas within Unison.
Great. Well, then you will have a lot to say about the questions that we have today.
I can't wait.
So let's get started. What, according to you, are the key focus areas for senior leadership to build a better culture for their organization? And how can they ensure that it is embedded in the company culture in a meaningful way?
Sure. Well, before I get into the key areas, let me just start off by saying that I think culture has to be very intentional. Culture shouldn't be approached in a blase way where it just is a result of the way that the company operates. You should have a strategic plan for culture just like you do for your business operations.
I also believe that culture starts off at the top. So it should start off with your founder, your CEO, and even your executive team to figure out what type of culture you want. And a high growth startup may have a very different type of culture or strategic plan than a large established company. So I'd start with leadership. I would start by developing your vision, your mission, and your values, and then aligning your entire people strategy with all of those. And like I said, it looks very different for very different companies.
Also, I believe that culture should be led by the leadership team. And the leader should be living it and exemplifying culture every single day. And it's up to the people team and to the HR team to really instill that through your onboarding, through your policies, your procedures, your processes, the way you recognize and reward your team. So it's a team effort. And I think the key is creating a plan and working through that plan.
Totally, I agree. I think it's everyone's responsibility, from the highest of the high, to set that tone of this is who we are, this is who we wanna be. And as you said, it can be totally different for a very fast growing startup than a more established company that really has their feet sunk in a certain way that they are. So an interesting take on it.
There's no set company culture framework that can be replicated as a copy paste mechanism. Once formulated, how can people leaders ensure organizational wide scalability and permeability of good culture practices? What role can managers play in the process of change management?
Yeah, absolutely, and I agree. I don't think culture is one size at all. As I mentioned, a startup may be very different than a large established company, but there are established frameworks out there for culture, right? Like McKinsey has a 7S model, you have the iceberg model. There are proven frameworks, but they have to be customized for your unique company and for your culture.
And I think the biggest thing is holding people accountable to culture. Once you feel like you've done a good enough job training and embedding culture into your company and making sure that everyone truly understands what culture is. And I always think of this great podcast I listened to one time about what is culture. And a lot of people think culture may be having a ping pong table in your office or having snacks or something like that, but those are perks. Culture is really, how do you make decisions? How do you treat people? How do you hold your employees accountable to performance? And that's truly the foundation of culture in my eyes.
So I think that's really important, that you let your team know that you are holding people accountable to culture. There's a lot of different ways that you could do that. The best, I think, is incorporating culture, your vision, your mission, values into your performance reviews and allowing managers to incorporate into your performance conversation. Are you living the company values? How are you living them? Are you instilling them throughout the company? So I think if people know that they're being held accountable to this, if the company truly cares about it and it goes into your performance review at the end of the day, it's a great way to make sure that you're really having your team look at your values and respect them as well.
I think that's a great idea and a very smart way to do it. I've spoken with a lot of people about these similar questions. And I think you're the first person to come and say, we should be having this in our reviews and having people accountable for it. And I think, totally, in your reviews, you're showing this is important to us. This isn't just something that we say we like and then sweep it under the rug for the rest of the year. That really will make employees continuously stay accountable with it. That's a very cool take.
It's important also that, to get to that point of where you are holding people accountable to it, there's a ton of pre-work that comes to that. You just can't think, here's our vision, our mission, our values, and our culture, and we're now grading you on this. You have to have an education process. You have to have an entire system in place to get to that point.
Recently, many big companies known to have a good company culture have reported a lack of proper DEI initiatives. How do you think the lack of proper DEI initiatives in an organization can affect the company culture? What can people leaders do to bring more acceptance, openness, and equal opportunities in the workplace?
Yeah, so I think a lack of DEI initiatives, or even a strategy, is truly, truly detrimental to a company. And I think now you see that more than ever. If you looked at business 10 years ago, we weren't talking about DEI like we are today. And I think now you see the benefits. You can sit here and quote all the statistics on how a diverse workforce makes you better. It makes you more profitable, you have diversity of thought. You're targeting different customers in different ways. There's so much data supporting this. But more importantly, it's just the right thing to do, right? It is the right thing to do to create a diverse and inclusive workforce.
So to not have a strategy, to not be targeting this, it's detrimental. It's detrimental from a talent acquisition standpoint, because talent wants to see this. It is critical. I can't tell you how many interviews I go through where they ask me what my DEI strategy is. Do we have a DEI committee? What does our executive team look like? What does our board look like? People care about this. So if you don't have it, you're not going to be competitive. You're also not going to be a good company to work for.
And I think, just from a business strategy standpoint, people want to come to a place where they feel respected. They want to come to a company that they feel like they're heard, that they can be their true self. And this is a shift that we've seen from an employee perspective over the last two years, with the pandemic and working from home. I'm sitting here in my house right now, and it's important that you can come to work and you can be your true self and you can be respected. So if you can't attract from lack of a strategy, you certainly can't retain if you have a lack of a strategy. So in my mind, having a DEI strategy, having DEI initiatives, it's table stakes right now. You cannot succeed as a company if you don't have that, nor should you, in my opinion.
So nice to hear that, because I completely agree. Nor should you, you shouldn't succeed if you don't make those things important. And when employees are showing up to work and they feel like they're being heard and they feel like they're in an inclusive environment, they're going to want to work harder and enjoy being at work and feel as though everyone is valued.
Absolutely. And just to go back to the second part of your question a little bit. I think education is really important, much like our vision, mission, values and establishing a culture plan. We can't walk in as people leaders or executives and assume everyone knows what to do, right? So I think educating is critical, and that could come from outside speakers. It could come from community groups, from volunteering. It could come from so many different areas, but educating your team and creating a safe space is also really, really important.
How can people leaders pay attention to their organization's pulse and constantly listen to their employee feedback despite their workload? What methods can they use to empower managers and use the right tech to gain actionable insights?
So this goes back to my last comment of changes that we've seen in the last two years with the pandemic. Another change is employees want to be heard. They want to feel like they have a voice inside of their company and they're not just a cog in the machine. So for me personally, I take a very data centric approach to our people strategy. And I think it's critical to have surveys at minimum. And there are a lot of great tools out there where you could have eNPS. You could look at engagement, and there's a ton of different metrics you could collect. But sometimes I also think the qualitative data is just as important as the quantitative data. I'm looking at our numbers, I'm looking at our lifeguard scales, but I love reading our team members' comments because that's where I truly get the pulse of the company. I see the sentiment.
So I think at minimum, you have to have quarterly company surveys. At Unison, we also do basically an end of year people check in where we're lucky enough that we're still small enough where our entire people team can divide and conquer and just have one on ones with our team members, collect data, see how they're feeling, and use that into our yearly planning session. So I think, again, kind of like DEI, it's table stakes. You have to collect data. You have to collect employee sentiment, engagement, and use that in your planning process. There's also a lot of companies that don't have budgets for tools. You could just use a Google form if you need to, an Excel spreadsheet. There's lots of easy ways to do this if you can't afford one of the nicer tools.
Absolutely. That's where tools like CultureMonkey come in and make it super easy for everyone in the company to be able to give their opinion. You can track their pulse and actually take actions based on what they're saying, which is so important nowadays, especially with so many people working from home and not really having the same workplace environment that we used to have, where you could go to the water cooler and have a quick chat with people and see how they really feel. We don't have that same face to face interaction like we used to. So we have to kind of step it up a little more in other ways.
Yeah, it's so hard not being able to just walk around the office and take a look at different teams and see how they're interacting. Like you said, the water cooler conversations. So you have to embrace technology to start getting that feedback.
What, according to you, should top business leaders focus on with respect to DEI and B policies to avoid attrition due to DEI related issues in an organization?
It's a great question. And truthfully, I think that policies are the least important thing when it comes to DEI initiatives. And hear me out for a minute, because this could be controversial, but you should have policies that already support DEI initiatives, right? Like from a legal standpoint, we can't discriminate. You can't retaliate. There's all these policies that already support that. So every company should have that in place to begin with.
I think from a retention standpoint, what's way more important than policies, because again, that's the legal side of it, is your culture. Are you creating an inclusive environment? Do people feel like they enjoy working at your company and they're heard? Do they feel respected? Do we embrace different mindsets? So that goes up to really your overall people and culture strategy and creating a great inclusive place to work. So policies, they're important, they're critical, you need them. But I think that is, again, I keep saying table stakes, but I think that's table stakes. I think what is important is your culture and your sense of community and making sure you're treating everyone fairly and embracing differences. There's nothing more exciting than differences and making sure people have a chance to share their different opinion, their different background. That's what makes the place really exciting and brings new innovation and ideas to your company and your product.
Exactly, and it all is with the authenticity of it. If you're just doing this because you need the policies and you need to check off that box, then that feeling is gonna trickle down to everybody. But if a company is really authentic about these things being important to them, then that's gonna spread to everyone in the workplace community. And everyone ultimately, hopefully, will feel that and want to come to work and feel included and feel that these initiatives are actually being taken care of and really being lived out throughout the workplace.
I agree, and you said one of my pet peeve words, which is check the box. I hate the box exercises, and you do see check the box DEI initiatives. And there's nothing that's more frustrating and disheartening, honestly. I just feel like you're better off not doing anything if you're not really gonna commit to it and honestly ingrain it as part of your company culture.
I think, luckily, just like you said, it's such an important thing nowadays that it is pretty transparent when companies do those kinds of exercises. And hopefully we're aware enough as people now that we're like, okay, this isn't really how it should be. You're not really getting the point of it.
Absolutely, your team, your employees see that, right? Like if you're not committing, you're not really giving resources to these initiatives, your team knows it's a check the box exercise. So if you want to go back to retention, it's a great way to get rid of people, with your check the box initiative.
Totally.
Do you agree that HRs are the custodians of employee engagement and the subsequent culture practices, not just the owners? If so, what are your thoughts on this?
Custodians, yes. The owners, no. I look at my role as Chief People Officer. It's very important for me to make sure we're holding everyone accountable to our culture. It's my role to make sure we're having the difficult conversations when we're not. But when it comes to overall culture, the entire company has to own it. It cannot just be HR. And again, that's where you see culture initiatives fail, when it's an HR initiative. It needs to be from the top down and from the bottom up. And every manager, every leader, every team member needs to own that. And it's up to leadership, it's up to HR for us to educate the team on what our culture is and how it should be lived. But it's up to the rest of the team to own it and to live it every single day.
Absolutely, I completely agree. And it's everyone's responsibility to keep that in action and keep that candle burning. And definitely HR leaders and the top team set the tone and pace for things, but it really is everyone's.
Absolutely.
Well, that was a very interesting take on a sensitive topic that's trending around the world. And it was so insightful seeing it from your perspective. To add to what you've said, I personally think that it's so important for people leaders to constantly listen to their employees and cater to their DEI and belonging needs as well. And post dealing with pandemic and remote work, leaders have realized the role of continuously listening to their employees takes more spotlight now than ever before. CultureMonkey actually enables people leaders to take actions on these realizations. As an employee engagement platform, it helps people leaders to listen to their employees, analyze their feedback and enables them to act on them efficiently. So if you want a super swift tool to improve your company culture, visit www.CultureMonkey.io today.
And with that being said, thank you so much for your time, Holly. This has been such a great learning experience for all of us. I'm sure our viewers at home will agree. And before we finish, please let our viewers know how they can connect or reach out to you in case they want to have a quick chat or share their thoughts with you.
Absolutely, there's nothing I love more than talking about culture, talking about diversity, equity, inclusion. So happy to connect. And first, Nicole, thank you so much for having me on this episode. It was a true pleasure talking about things that I'm very, very passionate about. So if you'd like to connect with me, LinkedIn is the best way to do so. My name is Holly, H-O-L-L-Y, Danko, D-A-N-K-O, and I look forward to connecting with all of you about culture, DEI, and everything people.
Great, well, that's all we have for you in this episode of CultureClub X powered by CultureMonkey. Until next time, this is your host, Nicole, signing off.
Frequently asked questions
How should companies build a strong culture from the top?
Holly Danko argues that culture has to be intentional rather than a byproduct of how a company happens to operate, so it needs a strategic plan just like business operations. That plan should start with the founder, CEO, and executive team deciding what kind of culture they want, then developing the vision, mission, and values and aligning the entire people strategy behind them.
Leaders also have to live the culture and exemplify it every day, while the people and HR teams instill it through onboarding, policies, procedures, and how the company recognizes and rewards its team.
What is the difference between company culture and perks?
Holly warns that many people confuse culture with perks like a ping pong table or free snacks. Those are perks, not culture.
In her view, culture is really about how you make decisions, how you treat people, and how you hold your employees accountable to performance. That, she says, is the true foundation of culture.
Why is a DEI strategy important for attracting and retaining talent?
Holly says a lack of DEI initiatives or strategy is truly detrimental, both because the data shows diverse workforces perform better and because it is simply the right thing to do. Candidates increasingly interview leaders about their DEI strategy, DEI committee, executive team, and board, so a company without one will not be competitive.
People want to work where they feel respected, heard, and able to be their true self, so without a strategy a company cannot attract talent and certainly cannot retain it. In her words, it is table stakes.
How can people leaders listen to employees despite a heavy workload?
Holly takes a data centric approach and treats surveys as the minimum, tracking engagement and eNPS while also reading team members' comments to capture qualitative sentiment. At Unison she runs quarterly company surveys plus an end of year people check in with one on ones that feed into yearly planning.
She stresses that budget is not an excuse. If a company cannot afford a dedicated tool, a Google form or an Excel spreadsheet is enough to start collecting employee sentiment and engagement.
Who owns company culture, HR or everyone?
Holly describes HR as the custodians of culture and engagement, but not the owners. Her role as Chief People Officer is to hold everyone accountable and have the difficult conversations when the culture slips.
Overall culture has to be owned by the entire company, from the top down and the bottom up, with every manager, leader, and team member living it every day. Culture initiatives fail, she warns, when they are treated as an HR initiative.
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