Diversity & Inclusion strategies: How to measure what you SHOULDN'T BEEN measuring?

What is diversity?

The short answer for the question “what is diversity” can be best defined as:

Diversity and inclusive practice includes gender, religious, race, age, disability, linguistic differences, socio-economic status and cultural background.

Likewise, the brief answer for “what is inclusion” could be best described as:

Inclusive practice is known to be attitudes, approaches and strategies taken make sure that students are not excluded from the learning environment because their differences.

A more detailed explanation of “what is diversity” has been described by various groups using a variety of terms and explanations. Some examples:

1. Diversity includes everything that we are and that we are not.
2. Diversity encompasses all those differences that make us unique, including but not limited to race, color, ethnicity, language, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, gender, socio-economic status, age and physical and mental ability.
3. Definitions regarding “what is diversity” are often described in relationship with work cultures and environments. The term “workforce diversity” is commonly known as it relates to “what is diversity” in an employer’s business location. Similarities and differences among employees in terms of age, cultural background, physical abilities, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.

(Source diversity.com)

The Diversity Buzzword: So important, that now you can have a CDO (Chief Diversity Officer) for it

It's all over the place, specially on the Talent Acquisition arena. A clear message to have a more mixed team composition, with all the possible talent "flavors" is rising globally.

We should be more "diversity oriented" by opening room for structured and well defined initiatives on this direction.

Companies like Facebook already have their own Chief Diversity Officer role and are monitoring and sharing the results about these initiatives.

Diversity is critical to our success as a company. People from all backgrounds rely on Facebook to connect with others, and we will better serve their needs with a more diverse workforce. Since 2014, we’ve made some progress increasing the number of people from traditionally underrepresented groups employed at Facebook.

• The percentage of women globally at Facebook has increased from 31% in 2014 to 36% today.
• Women in technical roles have increased from 15% to 22%.
• Women in business and sales roles grew from 47% to 57%.
• Women in senior leadership expanded from 23% to 30%.
• Black and Hispanic employees overall increased from 2% to 4%, and 4% to 5% respectively.
• The percentage of Black employees in business and sales roles grew from 2% to 8% and Hispanic employees from 6% to 8%.

Yes, these programs or "mantras" are being implemented and measured, but partially measured in the majority of the cases.

(Source: Facebook diversity report 2018)

Measuring and Monitoring Diversity: E2E Diversity Measurement is possible?

Using a high level approach to implement a diversity program, we should have something like:

• Align goals
• Define what to do
• Define how to do it
• Measure & Learn to improve what we did

Yes, you have 4 bullet point plan, but before jumping to a brainstorm or a kanban board style "let's go for it" strategy, you will need serious help from your compliance / legal team, and believe me, this step will be crucial and will avoid lot of trouble.

Your legal team can save you from trouble... from REEEEAAALLLL trouble!

Why? Because in different countries, you'll find different rules about what you can and what you can't do in this diversity field.

The key reason? DATA: what you can and can't collect, how to collect, how to make sure every side knows that you are using it for the right and compliant reason.

I have seen lot of companies screaming to be able to measure diversity from an E2E perspective and very often they argue with me with things like

Hey, you just have to include a few extra fields on the applicant form... ask for race, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and a few more!

and I complete the sentence with a

Great! After that we just have to wait for the hurricane of lawsuits from all over the place!

It's suicide to "just include fields" and start to capture these type of information without:

• Checking if it is legal;
• Explain why we are collecting and how we will treat these data points;
• Create strong mechanisms to audit if this information is properly protected;

The big dilema is to make the candidate / job seeker really understand that you are capturing diversity related data to improve that area, not to exclude him/her from the recruitment process.

So, it's a challenge to measure how good you are creating awareness about diversity and if you are increasing or decreasing the attraction levels, because you cannot measure what you cannot collect!

What companies are doing now, is trying to track at least the diversity numbers on the end of the recruitment funnel, when they are face to face with candidates, so they can maybe collect some data points with candidates consent.

Ok, it's something, but by only capturing those final stages, we are not capturing and measuring where we are loosing our "diversity candidates" on the rest of the recruitment funnel.

Survey Strategy: good or bad idea?

There are alternative strategies, like sending a survey after the recruitment process is closed, clearly explaining that you as a company would like to measure your diversity strategy and asking the candidate to "self classify" themselves about diversity aspects, so that you can better understand your recruitment funnel for this prisma.

Here the key differentiator is the fact that is easier to engage the candidate, because the recruitment process is already finished, so we have a consensus that these new data points will not make any impact... positive or negative.

Hope for better days

I love data points, but I also love to be "in peace" with my legal team, so I hope for more mature and open minded / flexible legislation to come soon, so that effectively measure and react towards to inclusion.