How can you use inclusion metrics to drive positive change?

Inclusion is a behavior and way of working. Knowing your biases and being consciously aware about them. Being comfortable with multiple perspectives and personalities. Listening attentively. Getting people to speak up and asking for a point of view. Diversity of thought, experience, culture, education etc all adds color to the pallet and makes a great painting.

We have to distinguish between inclusion at the organization level vs individual "feelings of inclusion." Knowing how individuals feel is useless unless you know what makes them feel that way. From the organization perspective "Inclusion is what you do": in an inclusive organization, nothing interferes with any employee’s ability to perform at their full potential. Unfortunately, many things can interfere with the satisfaction of individuals: being treated with disrespect by a colleague, not being compensated adequately, being asked to stay connected even when on vacation, and so on. Inclusion metrics quantify the workplace experiences that impact individual employees, and help us to see how these experiences differ for different groups.

At FCC USA, we integrate inclusion metrics to track our progress and ensure every child feels valued and empowered. By assessing participation rates, engagement levels, and feedback from diverse communities, we tailor our programs to foster an inclusive environment. Using these metrics, we drive positive change by continuously adapting and improving our initiatives to cater to the needs of all, embracing diversity, and creating a welcoming space for everyone to thrive

Inclusion Metrics: Workforce demographics: Gender, race, age, etc. Leadership diversity: Varied representation in leadership roles. Pay Equity Metrics: Gender and race pay gaps: Analyzing salary data. Employee Engagement: Inclusion survey results: Assessing experiences. Turnover rates: Analyzing demographic-specific turnover. Promotion rates: Examining demographic-specific trends. Development opportunities: Assessing training access. Accessibility metrics: Ensuring inclusivity. Accommodation requests: Addressing specific needs. Evaluating supplier diversity: Promoting economic inclusion. Inclusive Leadership Metrics: Leadership commitment: Active promotion of inclusivity. Training and education: Tracking diversity program participation.

Though it uses the term 'metrices', this is more of a qualitative term. Celebration of diversity, celebration of variety, acknowledgement of different profiles are all inclusion metrices. Some of the metrices for inclusion are: 1. Systematic manner of engagement 2. Periodic forum for sharing views and perspectives 3. Team bonding and group activity 4. Helping all to come up to a certain level

The goal of having inclusion metrics is about accountability, and ensuring those who are responsible for driving much-needed change, are doing so effectively with integrity and transparency. It is about implementing performance criteria and expectations of leaders, which includes the ability to cultivate and safeguard an inclusive culture. The goal is to ensure those who do stay in leadership roles, meet a standard of performance which should include diversity, equity & inclusion.

DE&I metrics helps us to identify organisational hotspots across the employee lifecycle and thus assists with prioritisation of effect of resources. I work on the principle of what gets measured gets done. Metrics helps to drive action, and supports with trend analysis of where we are doing well and where we still need to develop. They also help with accountability setting - assuming the metric is public.

Inclusion metrics should measure what is happening to people, not how they feel. Simply asking people how included they feel is like a doctor asking you only how healthy you feel and then trying to cure you based on your response. Instead, doctors ask for specific symptoms to identify a disease and find a cure. Similarly, we have developed a platform where employees (anonymously) describe workplace experiences that impact their ability to work, then specify the "category" (e.g., promotion, compensation, work-life balance...) and the "sources" that caused each experience (e.g., leadership, managers, customers...). The combination of descriptions, categories and sources gives a clear picture of what is happening and who is most impacted.

Inclusion metrics are as important as measuring diversity, but are often overlooked. Particularly important is looking not just at what is said, and by who - but also at what is not being said. This often reveals a picture of who doesn't feel safe sharing their experiences and where there is a lack of belonging and inclusion. At InChorus, we are focused on creating safer speakup channels that enables employees to capture the everyday moments that shape their sense of inclusion. This offers an important insights into psychological safety and enables companies to begin to track inclusion over time and the impact of EDI initiatives.

You inclusion metrics should be created as a result of data collection and analysis. Too often organisations create DE&I goals, targets and metrics without data analysis. They also primarily focus on gender at the expenses of intersection bias and exclusion. They could focus on increasing representation of diverse groups as well as ramping up feelings of belonging and respect.

Any well-built system of metrics will always identify areas for improvement. What's your next step? Consider a media team disappointed to realize it's coming up short re: quoting women and people of color. Journalists may feel they're trying hard to do diverse outreach. But a close look at the process may find that a lot of the outreach happens on a very tight deadline. White males (who often are quite accustomed to being quoted) respond fast. Women and POC do not. The solution: do longer lead-time outreach, as well as off-deadline outreach to diverse voices. That widens the pool of people who gain inner-circle status ahead of time. The key insight: Metrics pay off when they lead to reflection instead of just inspection.

Inclusive metrics are used to monitor and evaluate activities to overcome situations .It is effective in identifying what is working well and what needs to be changed . communicating and collaborating with stakeholders makes it easy to solicit their feedback and input.

The quantitative data tells you what areas are most problematic and who is causing the problems. The demographic data tells you who is impacted. Together, the quantitative and demographic data tell you where you have the biggest opportunities to create greater inclusion, and thus reduce your financial losses and your unwanted attrition. The qualitative data (descriptions of experiences) then tells you exactly what is happening in those areas. For instance, data may show that work-life balance is a particular problem with women, and then you may read a lot of complaints about all-hands meeting being held early morning, interfering with childcare. Or you may find that some managers frequently forget to include certain people in meetings.

Promoting the importance of managing bias Acknowledged holidays of all cultures Promote pay equity Facilitate ongoing feed back

Continuous tracking and review is essential. It's also key in involve other stakeholders - members of ERGs and BRGs to helps to evaluate performance and improvement.

For change to happen, any metric has to be made public, as behavioural science has shown that public accountability drives action. Thus communicating both internally and externally is critical to driving change as well review and elevation of success.

First, you need an internal communication strategy. First, I mean, before even collecting the metrics. Your people need to understand what inclusion is, how do you define and meassure it in your organisation, and why is important. Also, how the data will be treated and used, the purpose, and the outcomes. Are you going to make changes based on the data or are you just collecting to show you care, but you don't intent to take actions? People need to know your commitment, they need to trust you and believe inclusion is or will be part of the company culture. Why would they share their feelings with you otherwise? Then, you can communicate results, and actions. I recommend townhalls for internal communication, one at the beggining and one now.

Inclusion metrics are simply a hygiene factor. They are a must have but they aren’t the end game. Too many organisations get stuck in a loop of analysis paralysis and spend all their time developing and feeding the beast that is data management. But feeding the data often leads to inaction. Lots of companies find themselves doing the work to measure the progress but not taking the actions to change the progress. The gender pay gap is an excellent example of how the measurement becomes the industry yet many organisations and sectors are unlikely to make demonstrable change on gender parity in the near term despite investing significant time and resource into understanding and reporting on the gender pay gap. My advice…. Focus on action

When selecting partners to collaborate with, we assess the diversity and inclusion within their executive team and board members. If it doesn't align with the populations they serve, we inquire about their strategies for improvement. If there isn't a plan in place, we seek partners who are proactive and intentional in addressing these considerations.