DIVERSITY PRACTICES & RESOURCES MEASUREMENT
Measuring diversity is about assessing and driving organizational change and impact. It is about implementing metrics and creating a tool, a vehicle that ensures the creation, management, valuing, and leveraging of a diverse workforce for organizational effectiveness and sustained competitiveness.
The following diversity measurement practices provide a framework for establishing a strategic approach to diversity measurements, and highlights lessons learned based upon the experience of those paving the way in this evolving field. It should be stressed that the following model is provided -- for information only -- to assist your diversity professionals in developing or fine-tuning (as the case may be) your diversity initiatives. Measurements tend to fall into these six categories.
Demographics:
The most common measurements, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Affirmative Action (AA) metrics, provide the foundation for the majority of evaluations of workforce composition.
Organization Culture:
Organization culture measures provide opportunities to assess the work environment and how different groups view that environment. The most common ways to assess organization culture is through cultural audits, surveys, focus groups, and networking groups. Some companies incorporate diversity-related questions into established employee surveys. The questions generally address how people feel they are valued, what they feel their career opportunities are, how well they are managed and respected by their managers, and their general attitudes about the workplace. Other firms use individual outreach methods or focus and networking groups.
Accountability:
Even with assessment techniques, practitioners say that changes will not effectively take place in the composition and organization of the workplace culture without accountability. Tools to create measurable accountability include checklists, 360-degree feedback, peer reviews, employee attitude surveys, evaluations that incorporate diversity, and self-evaluations.
Several companies have made diversity objectives accountable for 20 to 25 percent of management bonuses and incentives. Managers are increasingly being held accountable to a scorecard that includes business objectives, organization culture, and demographic goals. Companies want managers who are not only successful with bottom-line measures, but who can also create a positive environment that values, respects, and leverages all employee talents.
Accountability measures apply primarily to managers, but some companies are extending behavioral accountabilities to all employees.
Productivity, Growth and Profitability:
Productivity, growth, and profitability remain the most challenging and most difficult areas to measure. Most often these measures are tied to employee morale, retention, turnover, and absenteeism. Productivity is often tied to less tangible measures such as greater idea generation and problem-solving capabilities of diverse groups. Increasingly, these measures are being applied to global operations and expansion of markets.
Benchmarking:
Benchmarking is a measure that provides opportunities to learn what other companies are doing, what they have discovered in the process, and to assess companies progress in relation to one another. Benchmark studies have been conducted across industries, while some are industry-specific.
Benchmarking, however, has several limitations including, for instance, that exact practices cannot be replicated in a timely fashion and that differing corporate culture and organizational structure may be barriers.
Programmatic Measures:
Diversity and training effectiveness assessments are among the most common programmatic measures (e.g., the effectiveness of training and trainers). Other measures include monitoring usage of programs such as flexible work arrangements or resource and referral services. Mentoring might also be measured by success rate and term of mentorship.
Although much of what diversity attempts to accomplish is difficult to measure, observations indicate a clearly visible change. Those changes most often refer to more openness in discussing issues around diversity, more self-expression in the workplace, participation in networking groups, better management practices and behaviors, and role modeling from the top of the organization. For measures to take hold, many practitioners feel that they must be linked to organizational objectives, and must be supported by, and integrated with, other corporate measures.