The Diversity Assessment Tool You Didn’t Know You Needed

Whether your company calls their diversity and inclusion effort DEI or D “and” I, the data doesn’t lie. Companies that successfully embrace, build, and retain intersectionality diverse teams enjoy greater success.

One study finds that diverse teams demonstrate greater innovative capacities and make better decisions. On top of this, a McKinsey study found that companies with diverse gender and ethnic compositions are more likely to outperform their less diverse competition.

However, creating a diverse team is more complicated than simply deciding to hire candidates from underrepresented groups. And unless you have adequate data, it can be difficult to determine where your diversity sourcing and hiring strategy has gaps that you can close to drive improved outcomes.

These challenges are faced by many organizations, and the key to addressing them begins with diversity assessment tools.

What is a Diversity Assessment?

A diversity assessment is a process of analyzing your company’s current performance in terms of diversity. This could relate to the organization as a whole, or it could refer to a specific area (ex: the number of women at the SVP level).

The goal of a diversity assessment is to provide you with a clear, data-driven picture of where you currently stand. Whether this assessment will serve as your baseline or a report of progress, a diversity assessment is an integral step to guiding strategic planning and allocation of resources.

Measuring Diversity Results

One challenge of measuring diversity comes with determining how you define success. For example, how do you know when your team is diverse enough? You also must consider how you set workforce representation goals. While we most often think of diversity in terms of gender, race, and sexual orientation, your DEI representation goals may also include age, education, religion, or parental status.

Areas to assess should include:

• The application pool– Take a closer look at your applicant’s compared to who you’re actually hiring. If a large number of a certain group are applying, but your current staff doesn’t reflect this makeup, then you might want to look at your hiring process.
• Organization Levels– Examine how diversity plays out across organization levels. In many cases, companies have ample diversity in entry-level roles only to find it lacking in leadership positions.
• Employee Satisfaction and Retention– A pattern of employees from historically marginalized groups either leaving your company after a short time or reporting dissatisfaction with their roles could spell bad news for your DEI initiatives.

Diversity Assessment Tools

To assess the diversity of your company, there are a number of diversity assessment tools at your disposal. For example, anonymous surveys allow you to connect with specific members of your team, inquiring into all facets of job satisfaction without fear of retaliation.

It’s also integral to conduct diversity assessments of your hiring process, that is, taking a closer look at your pre-employment process. For example, a pre-employment screening can measure for inclusivity, bringing to your team only candidates who are welcoming of others.

To take it a step further, consider diversity analytics software that can give your organization a clearer picture of your hiring process and provide the data you need to actively track the performance of DEI initiatives. These diversity and inclusion platforms enable your HR teams to better understand which stages of the hiring process are causing diverse candidates to fall out of the recruitment process.

The Best Diversity Assessment Tool Out There

Included, our AI-powered DEI solution, can quickly identify biases within your hiring process and help you to see and understand your company’s DEI data so you can target your improvement efforts. Your team can easily track talent acquisition programs through the lens of DEI initiatives and detect stages of the hiring process that lead to the drop-off of diverse talent.

If you’re looking to improve the performance of DEI efforts, then you’ll want to start by assessing your current state. The best way to do this is through Included, software that cuts through the noise of candidate data and allows you to focus on the diversity metrics you need. With Included, you can make sure that diversity hiring initiatives have a solid basis in data, helping you attract and retain the talent that will help your business thrive.

The Best DEI Assessment Tool