Every capital investment and corporate-wide initiative usually starts with a definable ROI. At a minimum, we identify long-term objectives, establish milestones, and measure progress.
It’s astonishing that today, where human capital is amongst the most important assets we have in our organizations, we make Diversity and Inclusion investments blindly. We hire staff, establish training programs, and invest time in the hopes that we’re achieving some nebulous, yet very important target. What’s even more surprising, is that we invest thousands of people-hours and literally billions of dollars in programs that are often counterproductive, and may even create resentment.
There are two predominant drivers for inclusion programs in major organizations—both negative and positive. The negative gradients are attrition rates and compliance ratios, lawsuits, and public embarrassment. The positive motivator is the fact that according to multiple studies, organizations that are Inclusive outperform their competitors by significant percentages.
As a matter of fact, according to a 2015 McKinsey study, companies in the top quartile for ethnic and gender diversity outperform their respective industry medians by 35 percent and 15 percent profitability respectively. Of course what’s not adequately reflected is how significant a role the inclusiveness of these top-performing organizations contributed to that greater profitability.
Whatever the motivation, the investment is too large and the initiative too important to undertake without clearly defined goals and measurable targets. The challenge has always been that we haven’t had a clear-cut measurement of inclusion, so, it’s been difficult to know how well our D&I efforts are doing.
Breakthrough Technology Defines and Measures Inclusion
Based on our 20+ years of experience in digitized training and technology-enabled assessments, which have reached over 5 million learners around the world, RW3 CultureWizard has created a validated Inclusion Assessment that measures 9 dimensions of inclusion. The output of that assessment is a detailed report of an individual’s current capacity for inclusion in those 9 dimensions. It not only defines a person’s individual position, the assessment also measures the person against a global index of over 100,000 professionals.
The Global Inclusion Index by RW3 CultureWizard enables us to create a customized human-capital investment formula that will identify needs, define solutions, and measure progress. Based on the Global Inclusion Assessment, the results allow any organization to measure its inclusiveness against a global norm.
The Index provides organizations with a baseline of its employees’ anonymized aggregated scores so that leaders/managers can see where the organization sits/ranks against this global norm. The aggregated report enables an organization to see where it ranks on each of the 9 inclusion dimensions.
The results enable the company to assess where it currently stands and to create measurable, targeted goals for its D&I investments. The information can be further refined by dividing results by job function, department, and region, and even defining learning needs by managerial group.
The data allows the company’s learning professionals to design and target learning programs with subjects and training focused on the needs of specific audiences. It further allows organizations to measure the progress of those groups against established goals.
The result is a better use of employees’ learning time, better ROI on training expenses, and the ability to translate training to productivity in predictable and measurable ways.
Want to learn more about the Global Inclusion Index? Click here to request a demo on our Advisory Services!
