A Road Map for Diversity & Inclusion Metrics

Metrics do not emerge from a vacuum. They are dictated by the organization’s diversity strategy and goals, which in turn derive from the business strategy and the requirements that business strategy will place on the workforce and the work environment.

ORC’s new Diversity Best Practices Guide, For Good Measure: Diversity and Inclusion Metrics, gives step-by-step advice on making this linkage. In the following excerpt, readers are guided through a series of preliminary questions to help set the stage.

As you go about selecting and designing your diversity and inclusion metrics, you should think through several questions:
 

What are the business goals of the organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts?
The metrics you put in place should allow you to track achievement of these goals.
 

Will metrics be set at the top level of the organization and cascade down, impacting individual performance objectives along the way, or will individual managers be asked to set performance measures that will roll up to produce organizational measures?

Some companies use a hybrid approach, with certain goals and, therefore, measures set at the top and others decided at lower levels and aggregated for reporting purposes. For example, demographic goals may be set for the corporation, dictating what needs to be measured at all levels, while individual managers or locations may impose additional measures regarding other demographic categories or other kinds of goals not covered in the corporate mandate.

Will you measure outcomes or behavior or both?
The answer will depend on what you hope to learn from your measurements, on the culture of your organization, and, very likely, on the maturity of your diversity initiative. For example, some companies decide not to look at outcomes during the first year or two of measurement, but choose first to emphasize certain kinds of behaviors or activities that will lead to improved outcomes in the future.

Which measurements will be used by the diversity function only and which will be reported to stakeholders such as senior leadership, the non-executive Board of Directors, shareholders, employees, the public?
As a rule, stakeholders—especially leadership—prefer simple, straightforward measures of progress. To understand what is behind those progress measures, the diversity function may need additional, more specific metrics.
What are the key initiatives on which you need data?

Metrics can change over time. While some may be standard, others will change as strategy and goals change.
What will you measure yourself against?
Performance measures only make sense when compared with some standard, such as:

    * Baseline: the level of performance at the beginning of the initiative or measurement period
    * Target: the desired outcome at the end of the measurement period
    * Benchmark: highest performance of a comparator organization (internal or external) or group of organizations

It’s important to strike a reasonable balance between too little measurement and too much. With too little, you will have insufficient data to diagnose and correct problems. Too much, and you will waste resources and, often, alienate executives to whom you report. The trick is to think through what you need to know in order to analyze your organization’s systems and culture, what you need to report to stakeholders, and how you will structure the data.

For Good Measure includes sections on:

    * Creating a Metrics Strategy and Selecting Appropriate Measures
    * Measuring Workforce Demographics
    * Getting the Most Out of Work Environment Metrics
    * Beyond Happiness: Program Metrics
    * Measuring Diversity & Inclusion’s Impact on the Business
    * Reporting Metrics

and includes instructions for creating an index, guidance on setting targets, and a sample diversity dashboard.