Clear the Path Towards Your DEI Goals with Guided Diversity Planning
Companies have made public commitments to create more equitable workplaces. So, why are they still struggling to make progress towards their DEI goals?
Over the last decade, there has been a rapid expansion of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and programs, to the point that DEI has become a core business function in many organizations. Billions of dollars have been invested in DEI for program development, training, technology, and HR strategies. Companies are making public commitments to promote DEI and are pledging to do more to create an equitable workplace.
Unfortunately, in spite of these initiatives, many companies are making little progress, and in some cases, moving backwards. Visier’s Insights Report on Racial/Ethnic Career Gaps found that underrepresented groups are still over 25 years away from pay parity with their white counterparts.
Organizations understand why DEI matters—besides boosting business performance, driving innovation, and being twice as likely to exceed financial targets, according to Deloitte—it’s also the right and necessary thing to do. However, commitments without action are just empty promises. So, why are organizations still struggling to make progress towards their DEI goals? Three main reasons:
Lack of coordination across the organization
No accountability
Difficult for organizations to see the impact of their actions and initiatives
What is preventing progress toward reaching DEI goals?
1. Lack of coordination across the organization
It’s difficult to take action to rectify inequities when your organization is not aligned towards your DEI goals. Building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace is the responsibility of everyone and requires a holistic approach throughout the business.
2. No accountability
Diversity initiatives fail because progress requires buy-in and a sense of responsibility. Failing to establish specific goals and build shared accountability will only cultivate the resistance to change.
3. Difficult for organizations to see the impact of their actions and initiatives
Tracking progress towards diversity goals is hard and it is unclear to organizations whether the actions they are taking now will help them meet their diversity commitments down the road. Progress is difficult if you fail to evaluate your activities and actions. If the plan isn’t working, then other viable options must be implemented for organizations to have a chance of meeting their diversity goals.
Ask, Align, Act Framework for solving DEI issues
By using the Ask, Align, Act problem solving framework along with Visier’s Guided Diversity Planning solution, it is easier to set, measure, and track progress while aligning the organization towards your diversity goals.
ASK
Assess where the company is currently at so you have a baseline to compare with. Look at your diversity representation rates across your organization and compare it with Visier Benchmarks to see how you stand compared to other companies in your industry.
With this information, you will be able to identify where your diversity challenges are and where you need to focus your efforts.Keep an open mind when assessing your data to ensure you identify problem areas lying within your blind spots. Taking time to review all your data helps you to remain objective and uncover the real issues. With Guided Diversity Planning, our Planning Consultants guide you on the plan design, including understanding the plan structure and assumptions.
ALIGN
It’s time to align your findings with people leaders’ and HR practitioners’ observations. It is important to stay objective here—your findings may not resonate with what others are seeing, and they may also uncover more insights where data isn’t available. This step is critical and ensures the people who can act are on board to help drive the initiatives. Gather all these insights together to determine your target goals, as well as what type of reporting requirements you need to track progress. To make this easy, our Planning Consultants can guide you through the goal setting process in Visier. There are three steps to this.
1. Set up your plan in Guided Diversity Planning
When you are creating your plan, you are able to define specific focus group goals, such as women in the engineering division, or underrepresented groups within leadership roles. Guided Diversity Planning allows you to set specific, measurable, time-based goals. For example, achieving a goal of 50% representation of women in management roles by 2026.
Create multiple scenarios for different focus group goals and assign multiple users to collaborate on these plans. This ensures the right people are involved and builds alignment across your organization.
2. See where the gaps are
Once your goal diversity rates have been set, look at where the gaps are so you can identify what actions can be taken to get to your goals.
With Guided Diversity Planning, you can model:
Adding new positions: What is the impact on representation if we incorporate new positions within the defined group?
Changing resignation rate for your focus group: How much faster can we get to our goal representation rate if we can decrease the resignation rate of our focus group?
Changing resignation rate for your non-focus group: What is the impact on our goal representation rate if we are able to decrease the resignation rate of our non-focus group?
Changing the representation ratio of your starts (new hires): If we are able to increase the representation ratio of starts within our defined group, how much quicker can we get to our goal diversity rate?
By analyzing the information and comparing it to historic trends, you will be able to see what is required to help you close the gap to meet your diversity goals. The insight provided can help you develop your recruitment strategy, targeted talent programs, stay conversations, and employee-level initiatives to help increase diversity within your organization.
ACT
The insight you’ve gathered from the Ask and Align stages now needs to be turned into an action plan to achieve your diversity goals. The enablement of your leaders and managers is critical to the success of your action plan. Throughout the planning process, our Planning Consultants will provide guidance on goal setting, action planning, and change management for the initial rollout of this solution, including strategies for effective communication, training, coaching, and reinforcing action-oriented insights from your data.
Continuously work towards your goals
To ensure continued success, monitor your progress in Visier by tracking actual diversity rates against your goals. Monitoring analyses can be created and shared to help you communicate progress to the broader organization. Visier’s customer success team will continue to partner with you to make sure your program stays on track and that you have all the support you need to reach your diversity goals.
