While a relatively new practice, tracking representation and experience from top leadership positions to frontline employees has quickly become a baseline expectation. Most organizations use engagement pulse surveys to get a bird’s eye view of employee sentiment towards both general workplace practices and specific policies or change initiatives. A 70 or 80 percent satisfaction rate on any given issue sounds pretty good, but entire subsets of diverse voices get lost: their experiences with workplace culture, policies and benefits remain underrepresented. This rudimentary approach of measuring employee sentiment writ large is no longer enough to inform a competitive people management and DEI strategy.
No matter how much aggregate, surface-level data you collect, no amount of analysis can create a story out of it that’s compelling enough to inspire change. The data itself and the algorithms you use to make sense of it must make room for multiple intersectional perspectives.
The Case For Disaggregated Data
Aggregate data represents multiple sources, variables, or individuals in one measurement, much like the typical engagement survey. Conversely, disaggregated data is indexed by key demographic variables like race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, or age, so the information can be broken down and analyzed by these categories, providing more nuanced insights. For instance, it doesn’t become clear that gender plays a big role in whether or not someone takes leave, how long they take, and if they think it will have negative consequences on their career until we look beyond the surface-level aggregated data. Are mothers and fathers in your organization encouraged to take parental leave at equal rates? Do they feel their career will be impacted? Using Ellequate’s policy assessment and employee survey, you can compare how parental leave policies impact mothers and fathers against the aggregate scores for parents as a whole. You’ll also have access to data-informed insights with demonstrated positive impact on these groups at other companies.
Data disaggregation is critical to equity and is already being used on a national scale to identify and measure health disparities. Health equity and civil rights researchers have been advocating for more specific self-identification categories on government questionnaires like the US Census in order to disaggregate the data with a higher level of detail. President Biden’s Equitable Data Working Group has also recognized the need for highly disaggregated data in order to fulfill their purpose of identifying inadequacies within Federal data for a more accurate representation of the diversity of the American people and their experiences.
Ultimately, disaggregated data uncovers what’s really going on with specific demographic groups within your organization so you can actively mitigate bias and make targeted changes to create more equitable employee experiences. Deloitte recommends collecting disaggregated data to measure the effects of an intervention and proactively identify disparities between different groups of constituents, which is exactly what we do at Ellequate.
Tell a Detailed Story With Qualitative Data
With each wave of tech disruption, the results-driven culture of corporate America has gotten even more data-obsessed, valuing a sophisticated tech stack, instant insights, and high scores above anecdotal, narrative, or qualitative evidence. In the worlds of people management and DEI, both quantitative and qualitative data are needed. SHRM explains: “Qualitative data are uniquely important for providing contextualized accounts of people's daily experiences. They are especially helpful with interpreting patterns of responses among a broader group, and exploring how people who are extremely satisfied or successful differ from those who are extremely dissatisfied or struggling.”
Ellequate collects both quantitative and qualitative data through comprehensive policy assessments and surveys with open-ended questions that allow employees to self-identify their gender, race, age group, LGBTQ+ identity, and more. Our platform drills down to understand how various identities influence employees’ experiences in the workplace. It doesn’t just measure how many women or BIPOC employees work in different areas of the organization, but also does the much more difficult and eye-opening work of determining why different groups may or may not feel like they belong in your organization. Your results indicate how you can most effectively support these marginalized employees to create more equitable employee experiences—and what you’re already doing that’s working well.
Companies pursuing certification with Ellequate have uncovered blind spots and issues they weren’t even aware of. Our proprietary algorithms won’t just confirm what you know, although having hard data to back up your hunches can give you the confidence and buy-in you need to move forward. It takes a combination of courage and integrity to pull back the curtain and take a close look at what’s actually working for all employees and which programs are missing the mark. We've built in features that help you turn your combined quantitative and qualitative data into a roadmap, which helps organizations with limited time and resources make the most impactful changes first. We wanted to make it easy for our clients to do right by their employees while making DEI more accessible and actionable.
We’ve built a community of over 40 brave organizations doing this work together. Watching them grow has proved to us that seeking out your blind spots and taking action to fix them makes the difference between organizations that succeed at creating equitable and inclusive environments and those that don’t.
What Positive Change Looks Like
If you can solve for the most marginalized employees and create better solutions for them, you can solve for everyone. People with limited mobility had to advocate for curb ramps at sidewalk corners for a long time before they became an ADA requirement. But something interesting happened once they were installed: parents with strollers, cyclists, and movers had a much easier time getting around and a lower risk of injury. By lifting up the most vulnerable, we lift up everyone.
We know that your leadership team can’t focus on everything at once. Instead of creating blanket DEI statements and strategies, it’s more effective to use an individualized roadmap to identify the most significant obstacles in your organization and the ones that will be easiest and most meaningful to address. From there, you can prioritize and set goals for the next month, six months out, and the year ahead. Our platform includes goal-setting and task management tools to help you plot incremental steps of change, stay accountable, and demonstrate responsive impact.
Our platform can also help you understand why certain initiatives aren’t working as expected. One of our clients pursuing certification had been focusing communications around their parental leave policy on women employees, but when they looked at their data, they realized that there was actually a big need among single fathers that wasn’t being addressed. The pandemic brought about huge changes in the division of labor between men and women at home, so employers need better solutions to find out what kinds of support are actually helpful.
Change takes time and is a valuable asset in equity-driven initiatives. The ability to track the evolution of employee experience and representation over several years provides important insight for strategic planning. A leader noticed that he could measure progress by how the qualitative data changes from one certification cycle to the next. Two years ago, employees commented primarily on the need to adjust hiring practices and increase representation. After the organization made some targeted changes in response to their survey results, the conversation shifted to professional development, cultivating psychological safety, and inviting more voices to the table. Using this data allows for employers to proactively plan and execute initiatives that will foster continued organizational growth—aiding them in significant ways in their race to the top.
Drilling Down: DEI 2.0
The first thing leaders need to understand is that employee experiences are plural, not singular, and they are far from universal. Your perception as a decision-maker is uniquely biased, which is only natural, but it’s your job to try to see from other points of view. Looking at your data and getting familiar with data-driven DEI best practices will help you develop basic literacy in this area.
We are leveraging the collective impact of aggregated data from employers across the country to uncover ways employers can best serve employees from historically marginalized communities. The more employers that engage in this work, the more insights and targeted recommendations we can provide. For example, we’re finding that what cultivates a sense of belonging and psychological safety for BIPOC employees is quite different than LGBTQ+ employees. As our database grows, the picture of how different people experience today’s workplace culture grows clearer and more detailed. It also opens up more innovative ways to interpret and use this data.
Is your organization considering more targeted solutions for measuring employee experience and improving workplace culture? With an Ellequate membership, you’ll have everything you need to make data-driven DEI decisions.
