Answering your questions from the Diversity in Tech roadshow

Celebrating cultural awareness days is one of the most common ways that employers demonstrate their allyship to various groups. On the whole we definitely think its a great thing to do.

However, as with anything, this can be done well or poorly. It's important that when you mark these moments, it feels authentic. Don't do it if you're not going to allow employees time at work to genuinely engaged in an activity that reflects the nature of the moment. And absolutely don't do this if all you're going to do is put out a post on social media or send a generic email to employees. In an ideal scenario you should not only be marking these moments, but also supporting them with a long term program around religious or cultural inclusion.

Some ways you can make these moments more impactful are to share high quality information about the moment with colleagues to raise understanding of the moment. You should couple this with practical guidance on how colleagues can support or celebrate with each other in light of these moments. 

Always ensure you are being sensitive to the current social and political context, where certain employees may find recognising certain religious celebrations challenging. A way to insulate this is to leverage employee networks to share these celebration moments. 

Finally, remember that there are many culturally significant moments that aren't just religious. You can involve your wider team by taking a wide view of the cultural events you want to mark. 

You have to ask why this is challenging and if these are actual challenges or perceptions.

Typical challenges:

• IT systems doesn’t support this level of data capture
• Employees fear discrimination if they reveal their true self
• Legal teams typically taking a risk averse approach, better to not ask, in case of legal action
• Countries in Europe have multiple legal, cultural and social reasons and protections for data capture of protected characteristics
• There is no standard on how to ask these questions
• The time taken to analyse the data and make sense of it all
• Knowing the investment needed to manage data capture properly
• Ownership, who owns what can be asked, how and why
• Companies try and do this themselves and find out pretty quickly it’s too big a task to do internally

With the exception of European countries legal, cultural and social constraints, all of the above and pretty much any other challenges are addressable, it comes down to how much the DEI leader wants to drive this agenda and help the rest of the organisation see the value of.

Approaches to address challenges:

• Create a specific DEI survey which focuses on DEI only
• Invest in a platform that captures this data using anonymous survey and dis-aggregation techniques
• Ensure platform provider complies with all data processor obligations and the orgnisation the obligations of the data controller - this will mitigate any GDPR concerns in the UK
• Engage experts in the definition of protected characteristics e.g. The Valuable 500, Social Mobility Foundation, the platform provider will probably have a good idea of what can be asked and how
• Create an internal communications and engagement programme to explain to employees why data is being captured, how it is going to be used, the benefit and value of having this data. Engage ERG’s, leaders, DEI councils, legal to cascade the message into the organisation.
• Create a cadence for data capture to track changes, measure and report on
• If the data needs to be held in a held system of record, consider technique such as the double-bind, confidential surveys to manage this
• Prepare to invest, typical platforms business models are per employee and subscription based
• Dispel myths, platform providers and organisations are capturing race/ethnicity data in France, race/ethnicity in German and, sexual orientation in India, it takes courage and purpose to push for this level of disruption and it most cases its doable.
  
  

This answer was kindly supplied by Sunil Jindal, who is a TTC Ambassador with expertise in DEI data products and services.

Best practice is to align the lived experience to diversity demographics, where advanced organisations are looking at this relationship with an intersectional lens. Invariably open ended free text questions are a great way to measure sentiment, however this produces tons of data which will be difficult to analyse and pull out pain points. This is where survey platforms with embedded AI and machine learning are a great way to analyse and measure sentiment. These platforms are typically priced per employee on a subscription basis and are not ‘cheap’. However done correctly and with the right investment the evidence base is critical to meaningful DEI interventions and programming.

This answer was kindly supplied by Sunil Jindal, who is a TTC Ambassador with expertise in DEI data products and services.

See the two questions above! 

If you'd like more information on D&I data collection you can also view our dedicated chapter on D&I data collection in the D&I Open Playbook.

See the three questions above! 

If you'd like more information on D&I data collection you can also view our dedicated chapter on D&I data collection in the D&I Open Playbook.

You may also find it helpful to look at the Diversity in Tech report, which shares that average disclosure rates for ethnic diversity information is 75%-85%, with larger companies toward the lower end and smaller companies toward the higher end.

When facing hesitance or resistance, remember that in the vast majority of cases it comes from a place of genuine concern. In our previous D&I report we found that 1 in 5 people felt D&I initiatives could be counterproductive and this was slightly higher amongst minority groups. Don't expect people to change their views overnight or to persuade them easily. Key things to do are:

• Listen to any concerns or questions they ask and try to look at what the concerns behind those responses are. Address them where you can.
• Acknowledge their views. There is room for respectful disagreement within D&I. 
• Focus on building psychological safety in work culture to enable people to engage with discussions in which they might feel uncomfortable. 
• Be 100% clear with employees on how to raise any concerns about your D&I approach appropriately within the business' expectations of professional behaviour. 
• Finally, be gracious with employees in discussions on D&I. Most people don't communicate perfectly all the time and sometimes colleagues may use clumsy phrasing, especially if it's been their norm for a long time. Don't penalise people for this unless it breaches your policies. Influencing with compassion is better than scaring people into silence.

"What was the occupation of the main household earner when you were about 14 years old?"

• professional backgrounds – modern professional and traditional occupations; senior or junior managers or administrators
• intermediate backgrounds – clerical and intermediate occupations; small business owners
• working class backgrounds – technical and craft occupations; long-term unemployed; routine, semi-routine manual and service occupations
• exclude or report separately – other; I prefer not to say

There is no magic bullet or one size fits all solution for leadership support and prioritisation. Where DEI sits has to be aligned to business strategy where all leaders understand the benefit and value to DEI being integral to their success. There are various tools and trainings to support, such as Inclusive Leadership, however, training alone is not the answer.

Asking leaders why DEI matters to them is a great start and if they can’t articulate a response other than what they have read in the news, raise their level of awareness on why DEI matters (talent attraction and retention, forthcoming legislation etc).

With DEI you are either all in or out. Partial, lukewarm engagement will only deliver partial, lukewarm outcomes.

In most organisations DEI is perceived as something that belongs to the people agenda and is typically led by someone within HR. As DEI evolves, and forms a stronger bond with ESG reporting and compliance, DEI will become everyone’s problem. In time, the emergence of the Chief Impact Officer will see DEI fall under this position along-side other core ESG needs.

In 2023, the life sciences sector created a first of its kind, DEI in Life Sciences report. The report has been welcomed by national government, investors and the sector itself for evidencing the lack of DEI in the sector with a programme of improvements put in place to address the challenges.

The finance industry in the UK is on the crest of a major transformation in how firms respond to DEI, see here. This is will have a snowball effect on all sectors as the finance industry is likely to demand similar levels of DEI data and engagement from its clients in appraising financial return and performance.

Given that disclosure around diversity is a major facet of this area of practice, most D&I pros should know that what's not said is just as important as what is. If you'r repeatedly being met with silence, you're probably asking the wrong questions. 

We have always sought to grapple with tough issues and disagreement. For example, when we did research on perceptions of D&I work we found that 1 in 5 people felt D&I initiatives were counterproductive. We didn't sit on this; we published it in our annual report. As with anything, if you want to create change, you have to have a passion for understanding the problem you want to solve.