In modern organizations, data is critical. We use it everywhere from Finance to Compliance, Sales, and Customer Success to make decisions, identify problems, and improve processes.
But one place where organizations often trip up on their data is with DEI --- because it's not always as clear-cut as measuring revenue, profits, or customer retention.
Without regular, consistent measurement, organizations will not only find it hard to understand their progress on DEI, but they'll find it hard to make meaningful progress in the first place.
So, how do we measure diversity and inclusion effectively?
To measure DEI success, we recommend 6 key methods such as recruitment funnel analysis, employee attrition analysis, gauging employee sentiment, finding progression bottlenecks, analyzing compensation data, and accounting for business outcomes.
In this post, we'll explain why data is critical to your DEI efforts --- and what you need to measure to see meaningful progress.
"We've all heard the saying that numbers don't lie," says Laura Mills, Head of Early Career Insights at Forage. "Data is empirical evidence that you're making progress --- or not making progress --- towards your DEI goals. It helps you understand your baseline, but also what's possible. But to make meaningful progress, you need to understand the landscape you're working within first."
When organizations are first getting started on DEI, they're more prone to setting talent acquisition or workforce composition goals --- such as increasing the candidate pipeline for a particular underrepresented group. And while it's good to have some diversity goals, Laura says organizations can make a more meaningful, long-lasting impact by focusing on equity and inclusion.
An example here could be that you find that you have a higher-than-average time to hire and a particular reason for that is the usage of unconsciously biased words in job adverts. So, data tells you that using inclusive language could improve your time to hire in this situation.
Moving past the 'D' in DEI means your organization can set more effective goals that align with your diversity and inclusion strategy, and connect more tangibly to business outcomes.
Here are 6 key metrics that matter when building a more diverse and inclusive organization:
As we've already said, most organizations start with their recruitment process when looking for hard data on if their DEI initiatives are working.
But here's the difference --- instead of stopping at measuring the demographic composition of your pipeline, try measuring the impact of your process. For example, understanding that candidates with physical disabilities are less likely to make it through your interview round than those without indicates that you have a hiring manager bias problem.
Understanding who is most likely to leave in your organization can help uncover ways that inclusion isn't working at your organization --- especially if you're able to view your data at the level of employee dimensions of diversity, tenure, department, and level of seniority.
By doing this analysis you'll understand when to act swiftly with retention strategies for diverse talent.
Ultimately, inclusion and belonging focus on how your employees feel, and if they're able to bring their full selves to work each day. Understanding this experience will help add nuance to your progression, attrition, and performance data.
Research consistently shows that employees from marginalized groups experience fewer promotions and professional advancement in the workplace. Measuring the varying promotion rates across different employee groups will help you identify where bias lurks in performance management and progression processes.
Employees --- and legal bodies --- are increasingly demanding that organizations work harder to promote more transparent pay practices. When building a more equitable workplace, tracking compensation can help you identify where embedded biases are contributing to financial inequity.
Diversity and inclusion impact the whole business --- not just your workforce. As such, Laura recommends that organizations take a look at how DEI is impacting external-facing factors.
Before jumping into the practical details, it’s important that we look back into the basics. This way you’d understand why a certain metric falls under a certain area and why a certain KPI is based on off a certain metric.
So, what are the key elements of DEI?
DEI can be broken down into three key areas:
Metrics are any data points that provide insights into a particular aspect of your organization's DEI efforts. For example, the number of women in leadership positions is a metric. KPIs, on the other hand, are specific, measurable goals that you set based on your DEI metrics. So, aiming to increase the percentage of women in leadership roles by 20% within a year would be a DEI KPI.
Now that the basics are covered let's head on to the practical stuff.
Here are some specific examples of metrics and KPIs you can use to track your DEI progress:
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Additional considerations include tracking unconscious bias training completion and employee turnover by demographics to identify areas for improvement.
Remember, choose metrics most relevant to your goals and context, focusing on those actionable and trackable over time. By implementing these diversity KPI examples, you can create a more comprehensive and effective DEI strategy for your organization.
Now, that you have an idea of how to measure diversity, equity and inclusion in your workplace, we believe you'll be able to make a tailored strategy for your organization.
Develop Diverse is an inclusive communication platform that enables your organization to build and scale a more inclusive recruitment process. Backed by AI and cutting-edge research, our platform helps your organization identify, eliminate, and retrain linguistic bias in written text. Find out more by booking a demo with one of our team members.