In part 3 of my blog,  I re-assessed the ‘business case for D&I’ and whether a  ‘human-centered approach’ would be more appropriate for creating diverse and inclusive workspaces. In this fourth and penultimate part of my blog series on ‘Unpacking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, I examine the role of technology and data in pursuing D&I strategies in the workplace. I look at how tech has been adopted into the organizational fold, and also list out a range of tools that are currently available in the market which support and enhance D&I. 

D&I Tech  Solutions

When we talk of tech in D&I we are referring to “Enterprise software that provides insights or alters processes or practices, at the individual or organizational level, in support of organizations’ efforts to become more diverse and inclusive.”  The development of new technologies – specifically AI, machine learning, algorithms, text mining, sentiment analysis, and natural language processing – has provided novel capabilities that can be applied to diversity and inclusion challenges. The primary purpose of these technologies lies in reducing unconscious bias, addressing inadequately diverse talent pipelines, and providing D&I analytics or insights to help guide decision-making. Organizations are increasingly turning to technology to drive consistency, scalability, and better insights for their diversity initiatives.  They are also beginning to allocate more significant resources to the problem, which has opened up opportunities for technology to step in. The D&I technology market is gaining traction and poised for rapid acceleration, with the capabilities to offer new insights that can drive new behavior and actions to further accelerate progress. There is a robust market for D&I technology tools, with an abundance of D&I technology providers (the market size is estimated at over $100 million dollars already). 

Let’s examine some areas where technology can support our D&I efforts and tools that are available in the market.

1)  Talent Acquisition

D&I technology for attracting, retaining, and managing talent has been a significant area of growth (it is said to be the largest segment of D&I tech at 43 percent). Tools in this category are generally focused on

• Providing organizations with access to larger, more diverse candidate pools via inclusion features for attracting a diverse workforce, reducing unconscious bias in the recruiting process, and facilitating effective candidate selection (Some popular tools include Fairygodboss, Headstart, InHerSight, Teamable)
• Text evaluation to minimize bias in job postings (such as Textio)
• Enhanced search capabilities to access candidates by specific attributes, such as gender or background/ethnicity. (See tools such as Atipica, Entelo, LinkedIn, PowerToFly)
• Job posting outreach tools with recognized networks of diverse candidates
• Automation capabilities to remove resume names or identifying information to eliminate unconscious bias in the recruiting process, match existing job descriptions to broaden the potential candidate pool, and facilitate more objective matching (examples of tools include Blendoor,  Eightfold AI, TalVista, Whitetruffle)
• Video-based AI to assess interviewers’ potential biases through speech and body movements during interviews with candidates ( 8 and Above )
• Candidates’ cultural alignment scores to help companies understand how well a candidate might fit into the team (Fortay)

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), organizations can not only access a larger, more diverse pool of candidates but also ensure a more developed competency-based approach. Whether it is by means of adopting ‘blind recruitment’ or standardization of interview processes to reduce bias, more enterprises should leverage tools that allow assessments based purely on qualification or skills.

 2)  Learning & Development

In the space of L&D, organizations have traditionally provided sexual harassment training or unconscious bias training as part of their D&I efforts. However, new approaches to D&I are gaining momentum. For example, tech providers such as BeingVR and  Equal Reality provide virtual reality awareness, unconscious bias, and diversity training to help employees better understand colleagues’ points of view – including those of a different race, gender, or ability – and practice behaviors in the workplace situations. In other words, virtual training today makes it possible for employees located in different parts of the world to understand and engage with colleagues from diverse backgrounds, within the organization. It allows them to experience the challenges that an underrepresented community or a differently-abled person might experience in the workplace and offer everyone the opportunity to share their unique perspective. Such technology can also find, flag, and offer structure to eliminate bias in performance feedback and scores and recognition practices.

Other service providers in this space deliver micro-training, such as using a chatbot to interrupt bias and recommending unconscious bias learning content within platforms such as Slack. Numerous tech solutions help diverse employees find mentors within or outside their current networks or technology to offer personalized career and targeted skill development.

3)  Employee Engagement

Listening and engagement software is another critical category of D&I solutions (seen as the smallest segment of D&I tech at 12 percent). Here tech and data work to enhance employee experience, communication, and boost employees’ voices. A lot of the feedback and listening service providers enable organizations to tailor survey questions and use sentiment analysis to identify themes in the feedback. Other technology in this category helps organizations evaluate their cultures in real-time and identify when teams may not behave in inclusive ways. 

Leadership and employee engagement technology, provided by  Cultivate, can measure differences in how a manager communicates based on internal communication data  (email, chat, and calendar, etc.) This helps the manager improve self-awareness and understand if they are acting consistently and inclusively. BalloonR is a technology that gathers feedback and ideas from all employees without allowing bias to influence feedback. Bunch.ai helps organizations analyze their cultures in real-time, based on Slack communications, and identify when teams may not behave in inclusive ways. 

Many vendors, including Culture Amp, and Qlearsite, allow organizations to customize employee survey questions to focus on diversity and inclusion topics. Some of these vendors use natural language processing and sentiment analysis to identify themes in written comments. 

4)  Analytics

D&I analytics are integral to developing insights in the workplace, guiding decision making, and prioritizing the D&I areas that need improvement. Common data captured for analytics include:

 Easy-to-use dashboards for company leaders, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as information on diversity representation within the organization (check out tools such as  Allie, and Diversity Dashboard)

• Critical sources of talent (check out Joonko and TapRecruit)
• Organizational diversity, using Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to assess whether diverse people are included similarly or differently from majority groups within the organizational network (OrgAnalytix and TrustSphere). This evolving area of analytics helps organizations further build awareness of their culture and opportunities to create a more inclusive workplace
• Data on pay equity (PeopleFluent, Workday)

Intelligence gained from these solutions helps assess the impact of specific D&I activities on business outcomes, for example, where to invest for maximum ROI (Pipeline focuses on gender equity and estimates the financial impact of achieving it for each client organization), and estimate the financial impact of D&I initiatives (such as achieving gender equity for an organization). Not only are there standalone and niche solutions in the market, such as Visier, but many of the leading Human Capital Management technologies have capabilities here as well.

In an insightful interview with leading Data Analyst in this space, Stacia Garr drives home the value of tech and data in D&I when she makes an important point about how  “we’re beginning to understand that bias may begin with individuals, but quickly becomes systemic — codified into our processes and now cultures. And once bias is part of how we work, it is very difficult to change through one-off efforts like training. In fact, training individuals who then return to an institutionalized system of inequity sends all sorts of mixed signals — and can actually undermine even the good faith efforts companies try to make.” That’s where technology comes in with the potential to bypass these obstacles and provide scalable, sustainable ways of improving D&I.

For all the benefits of D&I tech solutions, it is not without certain risks.

1. Implementing technology that itself may have a bias due to the data sets on which the algorithms are trained, or lack of D&I in the technologists who created it.
2. Creating legal risks if problems are identified and the organization fails to act
3. Enabling the perception that the technology will solve bias problems, not that people are responsible for solving them.
4. Reducing people’s sense of empowerment to make critical decisions
5. Implementing technology or processes that are disconnected from other people processes of technology
6. Enabling employee perceptions of ‘big-brother monitoring or over-focus on ‘political correctness 

Yet, not leveraging and tapping into technology isn’t really an option as it will make organizations obsolete and redundant. As technology evolves and becomes more sophisticated there are ways of addressing or controlling these concerns. However, it does fall upon us to fully understand the benefits and limitations of AI and other tools that we adopt for the organization and also maintain some checks and balances to ensure neutrality.  Most importantly, it is recommended that you use tech as one piece of the larger D&I puzzle rather than as the sole source of information (and decision-making). At the end of the day, there is thus a huge opportunity to use people-data to benefit diverse individuals and to make entire companies more inclusive. In fact, CIOs and technology leaders must also play an active role along with HR, legal and privacy teams in setting up the organization for long-term sustained performance of its D&I efforts. With the rapid advancement of data-driven technology tools, workplaces of the future will have better D&I fundamentals, allowing them to access the true potential of people, communities, and society. 

In the next blog, I examine some best practices and organizational success stories of D&I across industries and sectors.

#diversityandinclusion #asktherightquestion #syngrity #inclusionintheworkplace #diversitytechonology

Keya Bardalai is a Senior Research Consultant at Syngrity. She has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and specializes in work and employment in the service economy. Keya has a keen interest in gender in the workplace and works on how spaces can be made more just, equitable, and inclusive for all.

Sources:

https://www.myhrfuture.com/blog/2019/7/16/how-can-you-use-technology-to-support-a-culture-of-inclusion-and-diversity

https://redthreadresearch.com/hr-technology/

https://www.toolbox.com/hr/diversity-inclusion/guest-article/4-areas-where-diversity-and-inclusion-di-technology-can-enable-organization-wide-change/

https://www.mercer.com/our-thinking/career/diversity-and-inclusion-technology.html#regForm

https://www.cio.com/article/3374838/diversity-and-inclusion-technology-tools-on-the-rise.html

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Health and Safety

1) Use technology and data

A lot of organizations are forming qualified employee-run covid war rooms to support and enable the return to work to ensure that data is used as a guide, not conspiracy theories.

The government of India has created the Aarogya Setu Application which is a mandate for everyone. Whilst some organizations are creating an automatic contact tracing application for their employees, we could further the use of the government authorized application.

Organizations Must do a Risk Assessment

Risk professionals may not have ever created models for global pandemics this swiftly. A good risk assessment helps organizations manage risk and also prepare for the new normal. PwC has collated a checklist outlining what risk functions can do now.

1) Assess real-estate footprint

Tons of money is spent on real estate to open offices. With the new hybrid style of working,  organizations  are assessing the real estate footprints to optimize cost

2) Plan and execute RTW in a phase-wise manner

Employers are introducing a phase-wise return based on sites, job roles, and responsibilities, zip code-based health and safety information. It is important to assess who needs to return to the workplace and what is critical to quality. Here is a list of questions that may help you decide.

3) Covid-specific BCP/DRP

While understanding BCP/DRP, 2 decades back one often wondered why we needed something like a disaster recovery plan and when will it come to use. While floods, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, etc. seemed real who would have envisaged a pandemic. The last year and a half have definitely been the right time for all the training that happened in this area. Be ready and be alert is the mantra.

Ways of Working

1) Communication strategy

Re-acclimating an onsite workforce presents an enormous change management challenge for executives, who now need a communication strategy that can help employees who are returning to the workplace, as well as those who continue to work remotely, embrace a shared vision of what comes next.

2) Reevaluate performance measures

Times have changed and so are the ways of working, ways of assessing & ways of rewarding. Employers are proactively re-evaluating and realigning business performance, individual performance, and compensation structures that are appropriate for their business.

3) Hybrid working

It may never go back to the old normal. Some employees may not be comfortable coming back to work given the risks of contracting covid. Some employees might have preexisting conditions and they might not want to take the risk of catching an infection. Organizations are being flexible to all these new ways of working.

Focus on People

There is a need to be people-focused while employees return to work. The pandemic has instilled a sense of fear in the people and organizations are realizing that if their safety (Physical, emotional and mental) is not addressed and assured, they may lose their best talent.

1) Training is essential

Onboarding employees to the new normal and expectations from them is imperative. Expect issues to arise and questions to be raised; be ready to address them.

2) Create people-specific empathetic policies and culture.

The Work from Home in the last year-plus has given new responsibilities to the people at home. Organizations are being empathetic towards their new responsibilities and are looking at providing them with alternatives.

3) Organizations need to practice focused listening

This is a byproduct of people-focused policies. Without employee buy-in, even the best-crafted plans are likely to run into trouble. Organizations more than ever are keeping a keen ear and are listening to the information they are receiving about employee wellness, safety, and concerns. Agility is at the core here. The workforce strategy now Is agile, dynamic, and responsive.

By enabling real, two-way communication, leaders may turn the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity to strengthen corporate culture, increase employee engagement and boost productivity and loyalty over the long run.

4) Focus on wellbeing and mental health

Everyone took a hit during the last 1.5 years. In India, in the second wave in April 2021, almost everyone has lost someone they knew. This trauma will take a long time to leave. Organizations should focus on mental health and wellbeing data, either through Employee Assistance Programs, Mental health counselling, and workshops. Once people Return to Work, organizations need to bring life to work.

Is your organization investing in the above-mentioned strategies? How are you contributing towards the entire Return to Work process in your organization? Do drop us a comment. Get in touch with us to train your teams in the right protocols whilst they return to work.

Vikram Badhwar is the Founder of Syngrity, a leadership, communication, and positive psychology coach, and an experiential educator.

Malati Vasudeva is a Lead Consultant with Syngrity. She is a Human Resource professional with a global perspective, a keen psychology student & has over 25 years of industry experience in areas of  Learning & Talent, Leadership Development, Diversity & Inclusion, and Human Resource Processes.

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