The Hidden Story Behind Your Organization’s DEI Data

 

By Ian Thompson, Data Analyst

Successful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is more than just checking off boxes about gender and race. It’s about new types of workplace conversations, personal self-awareness, courage to call out micro-aggressions, organizational culture change, increased innovation, and a thorough data-driven DEI approach.

So, what is DEI data? Beyond demographic information such as race, age and gender (which covers Diversity), how do you measure Equity and Inclusion? The E and I data come mostly from surveys and solicited feedback from employees and applicants. One of the outcomes of DEI is to create a more positive work environment for all. Therefore, the primary way to know where to start for E and I data is by collecting data on the current sentiment of your employees.

Consider the following key metrics when collecting DEI data from your employees and other sources:

·         Demographics: All employees by function, level/seniority and tenure by group.

·         Employee satisfaction/engagement: Scores and survey results by group. Includes question set, and any other surveys aimed at employee perceptions.

·         Attrition data for each group, ideally by role, function, and tenure (separated by voluntary and involuntary).

·         Qualitative attrition data: Exit interviews identified by group.

·         Compensation data, including bonuses, rewards, pay increases, etc. by group, including new hires.

·         Recruiting data: Number and percentage hired by group, per job type, role, and level.

·         Numbers and percentages of job applicants by group, by source, and stage of hiring process achieved (e.g., screening to hire).

·         Promotions by group, broken down by level and time to each promotion.

·         Performance scores/evaluations by group and by level/rank, role, tenure in organization and in current role. Include qualitative data surrounding performance reviews.

·         Career Development: Enrollment in programs by group. Nominations to leadership positions. Number of mentoring and coaching programs.

·         Internal and external complaints, such as discrimination, bias, harassment, and the resolution status by group.

Fundamentally, DEI data analysis will expose the demographic gaps in the above areas to identify where to focus. For example, a DEI survey can show that African American employees feel as though not all employees are treated equally when it comes to compensation, career advancement and following rules. Looking at the below figure, we can see that more than half of African American respondents disagree to some extent about many of the Equity statements.

Looking at the statements that start with “Compensation, benefits…” we can see the most egregious disagreement among the African American workforce. 65% of African American respondents disagree with the statement to some degree, while only 25% of the non-African American respondents with Somewhat Disagree to the same question. This comparison can indicate what might be happening. Primarily, it signals that employees perceive leadership holding a bias toward certain demographics. Since most African American respondents feel as though there is equal access to professional development opportunities, the inequities appear to be coming from the supervisor positions. Whether it is predominantly non-African American leadership acting on conscious or unconscious bias toward their employees, action is apparent when it comes to equal compensation and benefits. Remember, identifying this gap does not make it magically go away just because you know it exists; it is merely a conversation starter toward action.

DEI surveys shed light on inequities such as the one above and much more. If your organization is struggling to initiate change in the workplace, now is the time to collect data and use its insights to drive change. Does your organization have any other tools to measure DEI? Share them below. If you are looking for an online DEI assessment, check out DEI360.org.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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How Great Leaders Approach Diversity

 

By Allan Schweyer, Senior Executive Consultant

Over the past 30+ years, I’ve observed that great leaders help each employee, manager, and colleague identify known and hidden biases that might lead to acts of discrimination, microaggression, or exclusion. The best leaders exhibit honesty and courage by going beyond rote training modules to educate everyone in the historic fact of systemic racism; not to shame the majority but to build perspective and empathy.

This remains rare, however. So how do leaders and organizations do it?

You’ve probably seen it firsthand: leadership sets the climate of transparency and vulnerability in the organization (or lack thereof). Diversity flows naturally from proactive and non-discriminatory hiring practices driven by leadership that understands the business advantages of a representative workforce. Inclusion follows where CEOs, chief people officers (CPOs), and other executives lead through courage, truth, and example.

At its core, this has everything to do with prioritizing mental health. No company can claim a commitment to employee wellness until people can deal with their stresses or worries openly and find help. Of course, wellness extends to inclusion and belonging. Until historically excluded minorities, whether based on race and ethnicity or sexual and gender preference, can express themselves, dress, and share their ideas and perspectives openly – within social and business norms – creativity and innovation will suffer. More importantly, workplace belonging and wellness cannot emerge until everyone enjoys psychological safety and can bring all of their constructive thoughts, ideas, humor, and perspectives to work.

When it comes to execution, effective leaders and organizations first make their commitment known and set strategic goals around diversity (as above, this should include implications for the culture and employee engagement). Then, as an organization matures and progresses, it integrates consideration of diversity factors into every important decision and every aspect of the business – from eliminating biases in hiring, celebrating ethnic holidays, offering training where appropriate, to checking the culture itself for systemic biases. Ultimately, leaders make a public commitment to change, including openness in sharing data around hiring, pay, promotions, and minority representation in senior positions.

Diversity and Inclusion Confer Competitive Advantage

In the digital era we inhabit, literally everything organizations achieve depends on people. Everyone competes for the same talent, every successful leader understands they must compensate competitively, invest in employees’ learning and development, and provide the resources workers need to do their jobs effectively. Most know and believe in the overwhelming evidence that employee engagement drives higher productivity, better business outcomes, and lower attrition. Thus, failure to engage, include, and leverage the full talents of the workplace represents not only a moral lapse – it invites disaster. It exposes unfitness for executive office.

Great leaders know they won’t always get it right, but they work with other experts, listen to their employees, keep learning, and set the intention to create a vibrant, healthy workplace and culture that embraces diversity. This requires tremendous courage and empathy but results in stronger, more innovative, and resilient organizations more capable of attracting and keeping top talent.

If we can help you on your journey, visit DEI360.org.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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Three Ways to Develop Trust at Work

 

Emmanuelle looks around the room at the sales team. She’s new at the company and still learning about the relationship dynamics between her coworkers. Tensions are running high as it was just announced that the team didn’t make their sales goal for the second month in a row. Not that she’s surprised.

This past month, the marketing assistant was asked to create a pitch deck from scratch for a potential client in Canada—a large hospitality brand. Emmanuelle found out later that he’d never created a pitch deck before yet wouldn’t ask anyone for help. The marketing manager knew that he wasn’t very experienced yet was too focused on meeting her personal goals to offer guidance.

The major blow came when the marketing assistant waited until the day before the account director was flying to Canada to meet the client, to hand over a few poorly organized slides that covered only a fraction of the information needed. Not to mention that the hyper-analytical language he used that wasn’t appropriate for a luxury hotel brand.

The poor account director had to pull an all-nighter to get the deck done himself, before pitching with red eyes on zero sleep. The result? That client is no longer a potential.

Why is This Team So Dysfunctional?

Emmanuelle has been racking her brain trying to figure out how to navigate this new playing field. What’s going on with this team? Why is it so dysfunctional?

Just because the necessity of teamwork has been preached to us since childhood doesn’t mean we’re inherently good at it—or even like it for that matter. Working with other people can be challenging, even more so in the workplace when stakes are high. So now that we’re off the little league field, what can we, as working adults, do to have a positive and winning team? According to Patrick Lencioni, there are five core areas where dysfunction can be seen in teams: lack of trust, fear of conflict, avoidance of commitment, lack of accountability and not results-focused.

In Emmanuelle’s case, her team has a major trust deficit. Teams that don’t have trust don’t function well. Let’s take a look at the importance of trust, what teams with and without trust look like, and how we can start building trust in our own teams starting today.

Great Teams Have Trust

Here are some facts about teams and trust:

·         Interaction associates & human capital institute study shows high performing organizations have higher levels of trust than low performing organizations

So the studies tell us high performing teams have trust, but what exactly does a team with trust look like versus a team without trust?

Teams with and Without Trust: What They Look Like

Teams that don’t have trust:

·         Conceal weaknesses and mistakes from each other

·         Hesitate to ask for help or feedback

·         Jump to conclusions about other’s intentions

·         Don’t offer help outside of their own areas of responsibility

·         Fail to recognize and tap into one another’s skills

Teams that have trust:

·         Admit weaknesses and mistakes, ask for help

·         Give one another the benefit of the doubt

·         Take risks in offering feedback and assistance

·         Accept questions and input about their work

·         Appreciate and tap into one another’s skills

·         Offer and accept apologies

·         Look forward to opportunities to work as a group

From $200 a Week to a $30 Billion Valuation: What Airbnb Can Teach Us About Trust

A great example of how trust can benefit a team can be seen in the now uber successful Airbnb. In 2009, Airbnb was close to going bust with only $200/week in revenue. Searching for answers outside of data, they noticed a pattern – the listing photos were bad. Without any data to back it up, the co-founders decided to travel to NYC, rent a pro camera & take pictures of listings. Revenue doubled within a week.

Without trust, the founders wouldn’t have been willing to try out an idea that had no data to back it up. In fact, they probably wouldn’t have shared that idea if they didn’t trust each other. And this idea prevented them from throwing in the towel. Now with the company valued at $30 billion, their trust was worth its weight in gold.

Now that the founders of Airbnb have seen the great benefit of trusting new ideas, and allowing for vulnerability, new hires are asked on day one to come up with new features to try out. They appreciate and tap into their employees’ skills and want them feel comfortable making mistakes. They’ve seen first-hand the benefits that can come from this type of team.

Sound Familiar?

If you’re reflecting on your team and realizing it might be lacking in trust—don’t run for the hills just yet. Trust isn’t a “you have it or you don’t” thing—it’s something that takes effort and awareness. If you find yourself in a team suffering from lack of trust, try these three tips. You can start using these tips as soon as today to help get your team on track!

Three Tips for Developing Trust at Work

1. Be Honest

·         Tell the truth

·         Be honest when sharing information, even if it it’s to your disadvantage

·         Use truthful nonverbal communication

·         Experts say more than half communication is nonverbal

·         Look people in the eye, use open body language

2. Communicate Openly

·         Talk to your team members in an honest, meaningful way

·         Listen deeply for what’s being said, and not being said

·         If you have important or relevant information, share it immediately with the team

·         Meet face to face regularly

3. Meet face to face regularly

·         Share personal stories

·         Ask questions (sensitively) about colleague’s family, hobbies, where they’ve lived, etc.

·         Don’t underestimate casual social activities after work

So let’s get back to Emmanuelle’s team—the team that for two months straight hasn’t reached their sales goals.

If the marketing assistant had trusted his manager, he would have asked for help with the pitch deck, knowing that he wouldn’t be reproached. He wouldn’t have hidden the fact that he didn’t know what he was doing. And if his manager trusted the team, she wouldn’t be only focusing on her goals, while ignoring the goals of the team. She would have made it a priority to check in with the assistant, knowing his inexperience warrants a little extra attention, for the benefit of everyone involved.

Imagine how this situation would have turned out if the team had trust—the deck would have been completed well and on time, the account director wouldn’t have had to drop his responsibilities to stay up all night and fix a deck. Instead, he would have been well rested and prepared to land a new client. And you know what? They may have a large luxury hotel brand on their roster—if only they had trusted each other.

Do you have trust at work? Yes or no, how can you tell? Let’s talk about it.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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Why Attracting and Retaining Diverse Talent is a Strategic Priority

To tackle longstanding workplace discrimination, many future-focused organizations are adding diversity officers to their leadership teams.

Why? Because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission didn’t solve the ethnic, racial and gender imbalances prominent in the U.S. workforce, and the issues aren’t going away on their own. For example, check out the following statistics about the dismal state of diversity in today’s workforce.

·         American Progress reports that in nonprofits, 82% of employees are white, despite the fact that just 64% of the working-age population is non-Hispanic white.

·         As of 2014, of the Fortune 500 CEOs, just over 4% were people of color, and only 24 (4.8%) were women. As Silvie Woolf said, fewer CEOs are named David than are women.

·         Google reports that 3% of their employees are Hispanic and 2% are black.

·         Apple’s employees are 70% male.

·         LinkedIn has a global employee base that is 3% Hispanic and 1% black.

Diversity Roles Future-Proof Organizations

Diversity roles are not only relevant for today’s workforce, but for the future workforce as well. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2012 that by 2020 more women are expected to be working than men. And according to 2012 census data, by 2050 there will be no racial or ethnic majority in the U.S. This trend will continue, because 85% of the net workforce growth over the next two decades will come from immigrants and their children.

That means the talent pool will be a diverse one; and if organizations want the best talent, they need address any issues that are keeping diverse talent out of their ranks and out of their boardrooms. Beyond talent on an individual level, a diverse workforce as a whole is important for the bottom line. In fact, 96% of executives polled in a Korn/Ferry Institute study believe diversity can boost the bottom line.

Diversity and the Bottom Line

Here are four examples of the measurable, positive effects that employee diversity has on organizational success.

·         Catalyst took a look at Fortune 500 companies with women on their board of directors and found that these companies had a higher return on equity by at least 53%, were superior in sales by at least 42%, and had a higher ROI, to the tune of 66%. Those are not small numbers.

·         McKinsey quarterly reported that between 2008 and 2010, companies with more diverse top teams were also top financial performers.

·         When 321 executives at large global enterprises ($500 million plus in annual revenues) were surveyed for the Fostering Innovation Through a Diverse Workforce study, diversity and inclusion were identified as the key driver of not only internal innovation, but also business growth.

Groups of diverse problem solvers outperformed groups of high-ability problem solvers, according to a study by Lu Hong and Scott E. Page.

The Course of Action is Clear

So if the workforce is becoming more and more diverse, and financial performance, business growth, innovation and problem solving can be attributed to diverse teams, the course of action is clear: make attracting and retaining diverse talent a strategic priority. That’s where diversity officers come in.

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t know how to incorporate this type of role into their current structure. They don’t know if they should add diversity responsibilities to current employees or create a new role. They aren’t clear what that role would really look like, and therefore have no idea who, or what department, would be the best fit.

Where Do Diversity Officers Fit In?

Diversity officers are often based in the human resources (HR) department. Yet HR can often be seen as more tactical rather than strategic in its thinking. Not to mention HR often doesn’t have a seat at the C-suite table. So who should claim this type of work? Who should look at trends, figure out a talent plan and advise the C-suite?

Next week we will take a look at the type of person, inside or outside the organization, that could successfully claim the important work of diversity. What qualities are most important? We’ll look at a hypothetical candidate and explore where this role might fit into the organizational structure. Stay tuned for a blueprint that can be used to build a diverse and inclusive workforce for any organization.

Have you had experience working in both diverse and not diverse teams? Were there any noticeable differences between the two? I’d love to hear your perspective.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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