67% of job seekers consider workplace diversity an important factor when considering employment opportunities, and more than 50% of current employees want their workplace to do more to increase diversity.
Glassdoor
Diversity initiatives have reached a turning point, from an era of trying to get to attention to now being considered over used, to stay achievable. There are still organizations that want to continue and sustain but don’t want to invest in a function, separate team or position. In this blog post, we’ll explore effective methods to stablish diversity and inclusion within your organization.
- Establishing the strategic intent: Before we dive into the design and measurement, it’s crucial to grasp how to set up the agenda of diversity and inclusion within your organization.
- There needs to be a clear connection between any firm’s mission or value proposition to its clients and the need to invest in diversity. It has to be connected through discernible methods. By quantifying these intersections, organizations can identify areas for improvement, set tangible goals, and track progress.
- Effective measurement is only possible when strategic flow through is visible to everyone within the organization especially at the team management level. This structural clarity across layers allows for data-driven decision-making and the creation of targeted initiatives to foster a more inclusive work environment.
- Primary research design and assessment: Diversity inclusion is a social research initiative, every DI program starts with gathering feedback from existing social groups. There are are two primary methods of gathering inputs that will feed our actions and measure our progress.
- Interviews and Focus Groups:
- The process of interview design starts with the framework-functional, structural, behaviors and cultural elements need to be clear before engaging the questionnaire design. There are multiple ways to structure a discussion to gather the right inputs, tap into the temperature and get people to narrate micro stories. It is important that you provide the right environment and interviewer so they can safely share.
- Once the framework is articulated, the questions are cascaded through the rudiments of this framework. Needless to say, the questions need to be connected to the goals. In measuring within an organization, it is important to have questions that are open-ended, this allows for different teams with different operating managers to share their experiences and insight.
- To ensure that you are capturing the right wavelength, ensure respondents have similar type of experiences, background and length of service hence you need to select the participants carefully. You will want to capture differing experiences, but participants should also be similar enough so they feel comfortable sharing their views in the group. If there is an opportunity, use the demographics data to screen in/out people so your group has the demographic characteristics you want.
- The number of respondents within a group can vary depending on the depth and complexity of questions you have planned and also the number of groups you plan to tap into. A general rule is to plan two to three focus groups for each unique segment or considered population. It’s always best to have at least 2 representative groups for each combination to ensure that the perspectives and experiences you capture are statistically value for a larger population group. The avalanche effect is true! This is where a particular idea or opinion discussed by different people a few times, the more likely it is a larger opinion and feedback across many. It is entirely possible that one focus group can have different and sometimes opposite views from the other, depending on the population group.
- The more focus groups you can afford to conduct, the greater your chances of capturing discussions that accurately reflect the most common views of your population.
- Focus groups require a discussion guide to ensure that the meeting is productive and focused. It is a document that has an outlined script and list of carefully selected and sequenced open-ended questions that generate discussion. The discussion guide includes a verbal script for the beginning introduction, initiative purpose, safety rules, actual questions and closing statements. The flow is important to ensure different focus groups are systematically conducted in a similarly structured way, ensuring that there is validity of captured statements. This also includes the order of the questions of our initiative.
- On-line Survey assessment : Online assessments continue to be the best way of capturing feedback anonymously and quick. It provides users multiple benefits of participation, safety, intervention and engagement. Internet based surveys also facilitate affordable and often quite easy access to large geographically dispersed populations. Surveys have the capacity to deliver rich, deep and complex data. Our focus should be on
- Wording : The quantitative portion of the assessment needs to be designed with ease of understanding where everyone understand the stated question clearly without ambiguity. There needs to be simplicity, commonly shared references and succinctly worded questions
- Safety : The premise and data gathering should encourage honest and candid responses. An external consultant can greatly enable this premise whereby respondents are assured that their answers will not she shared with your organization.
- Scale: The quantitative portion of the assessment has to be carefully evaluated if its meant for future repeats. Besides this need to continue to measure on a similar scale, attention should be placed to the science of evaluation. Recent research has confirmed that the 5 point Likert scale is the most useful in social research and data gathering.
- Open ended questions: It is important to keep this to a limited number as the ability to analyze across different inputs will be difficult if done internally. An external consultant will easily be able to run thematic analysis to review the comments.
- Identifying Key Themes and Patterns:
- Analyzing Interview Data:
- Immerse in information: If you have interview transcripts, read through them to gain a comprehensive understanding of the discussions. Look to identify recurring themes, challenges, and success stories.
- Patterns: Take note of key themes, recurring topics, and any initial patterns or trends you observe. Look for patterns related to demographics, employee experiences, and perceptions of inclusion.
- Organize the Data: Develop a coding system or use existing frameworks to categorize and organize the data based on themes, topics, or key concepts.
- Initial Coding: Conduct open coding by identifying and labeling concepts, ideas, or phrases that emerge from the data without preconceived categories.
- Create Categories: Group related codes into preliminary categories, allowing for flexibility in capturing the richness of the data.
- Axial Coding: Explore relationships between codes and categories, identifying patterns or connections in the data.
- Refine Categories: Refine and further develop categories to capture the nuances and interconnections within the data.
- Selective Coding: Narrow down the focus to key themes or central concepts that emerged consistently throughout the interviews.
- Verify Findings: Verify and validate findings by comparing them across different interviews to ensure consistency.
- Quantitative Analysis (survey data):
- Analyzing a diversity and inclusion survey involves several steps to extract meaningful insights.
- Data Cleaning: Identify and handle any missing or incomplete responses. Examine the dataset for outliers, errors and address them appropriately.
- Statistics:
- Measures : Calculate basic descriptive statistics such as mean, median, mode, range, and standard deviation for each diversity and inclusion metric.
- Frequency Distributions: You can also create frequency distributions to understand the distribution of responses for different survey questions.
- Demographic Analysis: Analyze survey responses based on demographic variables (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity) to identify disparities. Explore how multiple aspects of identity intersect and influence experiences.
- Detailed research based analysis: The study is a social science research based on a Likert scale, which does not lend to regular measures used in scientific data and research. Nevertheless, if important, you can conduct the following
- T-Tests or ANOVA: Conduct statistical tests (e.g., t-tests or ANOVA) to compare mean scores between different demographic groups.
- Chi-Square Tests: Use chi-square tests for independence to analyze relationships between categorical variables.
- Correlation Coefficients: Calculate correlation coefficients to assess relationships between different aspects of diversity and inclusion. Create a correlation matrix to visualize the strength and direction of relationships.
- Factor Analysis :Use factor analysis to identify underlying factors or constructs related to diversity and inclusion. Interpret factor loadings to understand which survey items contribute to each factor.
- Segmentation Analysis: Study the data based on specific criteria (e.g., department, tenure) to identify patterns within subgroups. Analyze and compare survey responses between different segments to uncover variations.
- Data Visualization:
- Charts and Graphs: Create visual representations (e.g., bar charts, pie charts, heatmaps) to illustrate key findings and trends.
- Word Clouds: Use word clouds to highlight prevalent themes in open-ended responses.
- Benchmarking:
- External Comparisons: Compare your survey results with industry benchmarks or external datasets related to diversity and inclusion.
- Internal Benchmarks: Compare current survey results with previous survey data to identify trends over time.
- Interpretation and Synthesis:
- Contextual Understanding: Consider the broader organizational context and external factors that may impact survey results.
- Thematic Analysis: Identify common themes and patterns emerging from the data, especially in open-ended responses.
- Actionable Insights and Recommendations:
- Identify Opportunities: Based on your analysis, identify areas where the organization can improve diversity and inclusion.
- Recommendations: Provide actionable recommendations for organizational policies, practices, or initiatives based on the survey findings.
- Report presentation :
- Executive Summary: Summarize key findings in an executive summary.
- Detailed Report: Provide a detailed report with visualizations, statistical analyses, and actionable insights.
- Action planning with programs that can move us towards the end outcome: The next step is to engage in share findings with employees and gather additional qualitative insights. All the work until this step, is to be able to successfully design and create a set of programs that are customized to impact the diversity goals that the organization has set. Once the priorities are clearly established, it is time to get into program management mode.
- Governance: This is the forum or group of leaders that are tasked to ensure success of the DEI programs. They are both the stewards but also mentors that can help guide a stuck project along. This is ideally an existing set of leaders with cohesive work relationship passionate about Diversity as helping the fabric of the company as much as financial ancillaries.
- Confirmation and input: Share findings with relevant stakeholders and seek feedback to ensure the interpretation aligns with the organization’s understanding.
- Iterative Process: Use feedback to refine your analysis if needed and consider future iterations of the survey to track progress.
- Program Plan with milestones, timeline and team structure: This is going to be solely determined by the capacity of the organization. This is an area where quality has to define the stages of intervention more than quantity. Most organization focus on high quantity-
- Focus on a marquee hire- a DEI director can influence the acceptance of the program and help accelerate pipeline of diversified candidates
- Asking everyone in the organization to take DEI training irrespective of their interest or passion in this cause
- The measurement framework of a DI initiative is critical to know the progress made. If you adopt stock or off the shelf score card from the beginning, it will look like slow or stalled progress. Hence designing a specific custom dashboard that is catered to the programs underway, outcomes relevant to be measured but connected to existing data systems instead of creating new avenues will help.
- A simple way to address measurement is to
- Define measurable indicators such as representation of underrepresented groups at different levels of the organization.
- Track metrics like gender, ethnicity, age, and other relevant characteristics to monitor progress.
- Develop metrics that capture the level of inclusion within the organization, such as employee engagement, participation in employee resource groups, and feelings of belonging.
- A large set of organization are excited to implement snazzy listening tools or AI supported periodic pulse survey. This will be helpfully in mature organizations but any modern firm is far from the ideal state of DEI standards in its culture or structural frame.
- More focus should be spent on specific process measurement, such as
- How many more interviews were done this month vs last for DEI candidates
- What was the feedback score improvements in DEI training, what portion of new members joined an ERG, etc
- Setting Goals and Benchmarking:
- As the initiative reach maturity and cross time horizons, it will help to identify how to bring the standards higher and accelerate the growth.
- This is a stage where some organizations could even consider this as a strategic advantage to capitalize and improve continuously
- Take on leadership externally either within DEI communities or within the circle of industry that your organization shares its ecosystem with.
- Benchmark against verticals and horizontals outside of yours and adopt best practices that are relevant to your strategic objectives.
- Always foster a desire and set a cultural signal that your firm is willing to invest for gaining a broader perspective in the area of Diversity and inclusion..
Diversity and Inclusion is a personal topic, it is embedded in the human code of how societies have operated. A large portion of successful firms have grown immensely by recognizing the strength in a collective workforce that is representative of the current and future shape of the external society it is operating in. At Kalodi, we help in all elements of this process and are happy to partner with you along the journey. Whichever step you take, ensure you start small in this complex space and measure progress.
