Levelling up your DE&I: how tech can help
HR industry analyst, Josh Bersin states that “companies that embrace diversity and inclusion in all aspects of their business statistically outperform their peers.” Clearly, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives are not just a feel-good, box-checking exercise for HR departments; but they have a marked impact on financial and business success.
Research by McKinsey reveals that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to experience above-average profitability, while those with ethnic diversity at the top levels are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors.
Despite these promising statistics, the CIPD revealed a significant number of employees believe that their organisations could do more to promote diversity and inclusion.
So how can tech help companies to ‘level up’ their workplace and transform it into one that is both diverse and inclusive to all?
Track gender pay gaps
Big employers (those with 250+ employees) have had to publish gender pay gap reports annually, by law, since 2017. But some employers may look to monitor the parity of their pay by gender out of choice.
Using HR software, employers can effortlessly monitor the rates of pay offered to all genders. With easy-to-consume reports that allow for effective monitoring of rates of pay by gender, HR and senior leaders can keep track of any disparity in pay amongst their workers.
Monitor diversity
Similarly, HR leaders can use software to monitor the diversity among their workforce. Where you already have access to data and information about your people, slicing and dicing this data with a focus on diversity can shed even more light on your workforce and highlight areas for improvement.
HR software can help you to visualise the makeup of your employees and analyse this by department, team, site, pay, bonuses, performance and much, much more. It’s easy to perceive that your business is diverse at face-value, but delving into your people data with laser-sharp focus can help to uncover new learnings and shed light on where there is room for improvement.
Ensure fairer recognition
A key part of a good DE&I strategy is ensuring that all employees are recognised fairly for the work they do and rewarded justly.
With most good HR software comes an internal social stream where colleagues can praise their peers publicly, managers can recognise achievements and every employee feels valued for the contribution. Providing employees with the ability to deliver quick recognition to their peers and praise a job well done ensures that rewarding employees is less likely to be overlooked. What’s more, within your HR software, line managers will have access to this recognition data for their team and can use this during performance reviews to commend their people further.
Measure impact of D&I efforts
As with any HR initiative, tracking its impact is critical to making sure that said initiative is effective, while flagging where there may be room for improvement.
As your project progresses, be sure to include regular reviews to check-in on progress. This is especially important if you are launching initiatives remotely or across multiple geographies with different team members involved.
If you ran a survey into the state of your company’s DE&I previously, run this again to gauge the impact of your initiative. With these two datasets, you will be able to compare and contrast any changes since launching your strategy.
Be sure to monitor your performance against your initial goals too. Whether you wanted to reduce your gender pay gap, improve diversity in your recruitment or have more women in senior roles; monitor whether you are on track to attain your objectives within your defined timeframe.
