Using People Analytics to Advance Your DEI Agenda

BY MICHAEL SMITH

THANKFULLY, DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION (DEI) has evolved since the days of simply having diverse representation in the workplace. DEI is now about ensuring people feel safe to bring their whole selves to work, and that employers welcome, value, and leverage what makes each team member unique. DEI also makes good business sense—from strengthening the innovation of products and services to appeal to various demographics, to ensuring optimal engagement from employees.

There is no secret recipe or cookie-cutter approach for companies to advance their DEI agenda. The journey is unique for each company and requires an understanding and alignment to its culture, values, and people strategy to achieve business goals. An analytical approach to gain this insight can help define a unique DEI journey.

At my company, Navient, one of our core values is “we’re stronger together.” We are purposeful about using data to uncover insights that help us live up to our values.

To help you through this approach, here are a few data sources to get started. Consider picking one or two data projects to focus on each year and continue to refine and add as you go.

• Conduct a labor supply analysis to gauge how your company’s diversity representation compares to the external environment. This “outward- looking” analysis across the employee life cycle compares your company’s diversity to the diversity available in the labor market, typically informed by U.S. Census Bureau data.

• Conduct a talent assessment for an “inward-looking” analysis of your company’s diversity across the employee life cycle. When Navient initially conducted this analysis, we found that mid-level women were more likely to depart the company than mid-level men—draining the pipeline of women for higher level roles. Further analysis revealed that many mid-level women were leaving the workforce for family reasons, which fueled our response to offer more support and benefits to new parents, create a women’s resource group, hold a women’s empowerment conference, and more.

Taking an analytical approach to build out your DEI agenda helps to inform a thoughtful, long-term, and measured approach for success and sustainability.

• Conduct a pay equity analysis to better determine whether gender or ethnicity has a statistically significant impact on pay versus other expected factors such as performance, experience, and job, and then take any action as needed.

• Collect employee feedback and understand engagement. In this new post-pandemic era with more hybrid and remote workers, it is more important than ever to understand the sentiment of our people and measure engagement and productivity on an ongoing basis. Dynamic or realtime feedback methods such as leadership listening sessions, pulse surveys, and focus groups may be helpful to supplement periodic engagement surveys. It is important to analyze this data by different demographics such as ethnicity, gender, tenure, generation, department, or location to identify strengths and gaps for action planning.

• Conduct a program, policies, and practices audit to identify opportunities to deliberately embed DEI in employee programs, policies, and practices. This may span from dress codes to promotion programs.

After analyzing the data collected, create and prioritize a three- to five-year roadmap to address opportunities for improvement and build on existing strengths. In developing your roadmap, make sure you think about how you can move the needle each year in areas such as management commitment and accountability and employee education. In addition, create a measurement framework or scorecard to gauge your strategies on an ongoing basis to adjust and track how your initiatives are performing.

Taking an analytical approach to build out your DEI agenda helps to inform a thoughtful, long-term, and measured approach for success and sustainability.

Michael Smith is chief human resources officer at Navient, a technology-enabled education finance and business processing solutions company headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. He serves on the board of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Delaware and several industry related groups.