A DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH TO UNLOCKING THE VALUE OF DIVERSITY
Cultural Infusion’s Chief Experience Officer Michael Walmsley shares the role of diversity in an inclusive and equitable workforce.
Michael Walmsley
Workforces, customers, communities and investors now expect diversity engagement, action and measurement.
Action on diversity has become not only expected but essential to the multicultural workplace, where it has significant business and societal benefits. Where stakeholders see action, they align themselves with those organisations.
Diversity measurement matters more than ever, as stakeholders more often engage with organisations aligned with their own values, increasing revenue, talent retention and reducing customer churn.
However, trying to unpack the value and challenges of diversity is not an easy task. While there are a vast range of diversity and inclusion solutions, the biggest challenges that companies face is the lack of the right data and, more specifically, data about who they are from a cultural diversity perspective. How can we hope to improve on something that isn’t properly measured or understood in the first place?
Created by Cultural Infusion, based on six years of scientific research and development, Diversity Atlas is the world’s first platform that has both defined and measured cultural diversity. Its Diversity Index measures overall diversity, which enables benchmarking as well as measuring mutuality – the extent to which an organisation is representative of its customers and communities.
Diversity Atlas tracks diversity within organisations across se- ven interconnected pillars: Religion and Worldview; Countries; Language; Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage; Demographic and personal attributes; Mutuality – comparing internal teams and external communities – and other experience metrics, such as wellbeing, engagement, safety, and inclusion.
This leads to improved performance across various metrics, including bottom line profit, staff attraction, retention and morale, and public image. Addressing diversity and inclusion in a meaningful way is not only lucrative, it also promotes global harmony.
Why take an intersectional approach?
By examining a single metric, such as gender or disability, the extent and variety of diversity can be diminished.
This may result in issues like underrepresentation or cultural homogeneity. By using an intersectional approach and looking at intersecting patterns, the complex nature of cultural diversity can be meaningfully interpreted.
An intersectional approach helps create a more inclusive and effective cultural change strategy.
For example, what is the correlation between people feeling excluded or less attached to their age group, gender, sexuality, type of disability, faith, cultural heritage or ancestral back- ground?
Additionally, what about the type of work or role, team or country they work in? By determining these kinds of insights, a far more effective strategy can be put in place that can engage more of the workforce.
Building on the foundations of equality, reciprocity and mutual understanding can, in turn, lead to the lessening of in- stances of misrepresentation, discrimination and hostility. Organisations’ considerable investment in understanding their customers’ behaviour and identity has led to an abundance of the data and insight required to compete in our data-driven world. Yet, despite the abundance of cultural diversity data and the proven competitive advantage that a diverse workforce can bring, little is known about
the workforce’s cultural identity. And without an intersectional approach there are many lost opportunities to both celebrate and unlock the infinite diversity that every company and team has.
Diversity Atlas not only makes these variables legible and understandable, but also actionable, for the purposes of both better portraying the cultural vibrancy of a business, from its smallest team to the company portfolio, and then working towards fully embracing it.
Data helps any organisation better engage its workforce by celebrating the richness of its diversity, which often remains hidden. It can be effectively used across the employee journey: from talent attraction, selection and onboarding to promo- tion and career development, to create a more optimised process that strengthens and unlocks the value of diversity. And with a greater un- derstanding of the workforce, it can help organisations become more customer-centric.
As many chairpersons have said to their investors and organisation, “Our most important asset is our people”.
And as we now live in a hyper-connected, data-driven world, Diversity Atlas lets an organisation measure its own cultural journey through a recognition of its own diversity, recognising that when we diversify, we grow.
MICHAEL WALMSLEY,
Chief Experience Officer, Cultural Infusion. Commercialising and globalising innovative technologies that enlighten people about people.