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Key Points
In this episode, Benoit Hardy-Vallee talks with Priya Radia, Diversity & Inclusion Management Consultant at Included.
Levels of maturity:
Diversity 1.0 is a compliance-heavy approach where organisations will tackle the legal requirements do with, with D&I which is critical.
Diversity 2.0 is a reputational or marketing led approach where organisations will start to take a stand in a more visible way.
Diversity 3.0 is embedding inclusion into our day to day behaviors, processes and decision-making. Making sure that your words are backed up by actions, that everybody across the organisation at all levels is involved- leaders and employee - and that it's really embedded into not just internal environments, but also externally - clients, suppliers, etc.
A lot of organisations quite often get stuck around 2.0
The Included framework covers five key areas for businesses - strategy, data, governance, leadership, and systems. Organisations often jump to the systems and processes part of it - they try and make certain changes but there is a gap, a need to take a step back and to redefine the high-level strategy, how it actually aligns with the overall organisation strategy.
The two recommended starting points:
Strategy is key in aligning leaders and making sure that everyone is headed in the same direction - that will really help pick up the pace of change.
Measuring the impact of both diversity and inclusion, understanding where the actual problem is, and then setting more targeted initiatives off the back of that.
Measuring progress:
Diversity is somewhat easier to measure than inclusion - the demographics and the makeup of the workforce, (gender, ethnicity, disability, and more complex ones like socioeconomic background)
When it comes to inclusion, it is a bit trickier: it's more about how people feel, Included has an "inclusion diagnostic" designed to help measure this, and there are other surveys and employee engagement tools that can be used to measure how well people feel like they belong. Benchmarking and targets are quite useful.
Remote work impacted D&I in various ways; a study done by McKinsey on women in the workplace found that women were more than three times as likely to meet the majority of demands for housework and caregiving during the pandemic. On the other hand, it helped individuals with disabilities or mental health conditions, where it's actually been easier to work from home, and they don't have to worry about the commute or going into the office as much.