Audacious Goals and Bold Metrics in D&I
Have you recently gotten an email from your CEO or your Human Resources leader doubling down on diversity and equity? So many CEOs and CHROs are committing to a better and more equitable workforce after such social unrest as we saw across the nation last month. And of course, we can all applaud “the wokeness” of the world’s business leaders and the acknowledgement of societal and systematic racism because it’s real and brutal… and it’s about damn time.
But in order to really get to what’s going to change – at least in the workforce – we should also ask our business leaders, “What has changed about your commitment to diversity when the research has shown over and over again that being black or brown in Corporate America diminishes opportunity in the earliest stages of leadership, with black women suffering the most in this in this inequality? What’s different now?”
Diversity and Inclusion (or “Inclusion and Diversity” if you’re on the more modern track) programs have been around since the mid 80s/early 90’s and were mostly created in response to discrimination claims and litigation related to those claims. The function has evolved beyond that to one that tries to promote organizational cultural competence. Cultural Competence is defined a number of ways, but basically boils down to the ability to interact AND APPRECIATE people from cultures different from one’s own. You can see how that would be a very important business initiative in this increasingly global economy and workforce.
But, dear reader, we are about to go through our next evolution in D&I, where organizations commit themselves to societal betterment as it relates to this topic. The Business Round Table (an association of chief executive officers of America’s leading companies) released a statement in 2019 on the responsibility of business in society that lends itself as even further proof that business believes it has role in societal betterment and equity - and that was even before the tragedies George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But we surely won’t get to a better place with our regular ole methods and our regular ole metrics. We know this because VERY LITTLE improvement has been made even with the focus and investment in D&I thus far. D&I efforts have made a difference only in the demographic of white women. And yet still, even white women don’t see equality in advancement and pay to white men.
If we are actually committing to making a difference, this means audacious goals, bold metrics, and as much transparency that we can muster. As business leaders, we must push ourselves beyond the safe and the same and into the progressive. And as employees, we need to ask for, nay - to push for transparency in data.
Audacious Goals
So, what is an audacious goal? An audacious goal is one that could actually drive real change. They are goals that would have been considered radical even a few months ago, but now they are progressive. Here are some examples:
Set a goal for women of color in leadership. Create a sponsorship program to help your organization reach that goal. Go after it with everything you got. Because everyone benefits - everyone wins when women of color win – in business and society.
Set a goal to remediate the increased turnover you see in people of color in within your organization, especially in feeder jobs for leadership.
Set a goal to meaningfully increase engagement for people of color within your organization. When you create tactics to support this goal, this will begin to address inclusion issues.
Bold Metrics
And what is a bold metric? A bold metric is one that demonstrates your commitment to change. Here’s one that can show you a real picture of what’s happening within your organization, AND demonstrate how your organization contributes to the inequality in the community in which you live.
Aggregate Distribution of Wealth
This metric is so easy to get to. Data-heads at your organization will bemoan it’s effectiveness at showing us anything because they are so used to having to cut and scrub data 1000’s of ways so the powers that be feel like the nuances have all been accounted for, but the beauty of this metric is it’s ultimate simplicity.
Additionally, we suggest data cuts like this:
People of Color/White Men
Women/White Men
Men of Color/White Men
White Women/White Men
Women of Color/White Men
This number indicates compensation disparity between groups within your organization. The result of this number should be read as a percentage and the closer to 100%, the more equitable the opportunity and the pay at your organization. But this number should NOT be considered alone. If your number is at or close to 100%, congrats, my fine friend. You are looking good in terms of what job levels your employees of color populate and how much your employees of color are making in each of this levels. It WILL NOT tell you if you have the right number of people in this roles. So, to ensure you’re cross referencing this number with a comparison of your population representation (% employee population made up of People of Color within each job level).
Other suggestions:
Performance Score Comparisons between populations
Involuntary Termination Rate Comparisons - Often, involuntary terms are higher for people of color, indicating bias in your termination process or performance evaluation process
Voluntary Termination Rate Comparisons - Indicator that organizational inclusion needs focus
Leadership levels and feeder pools as a % of people of color - This will show you exactly where the broken rung(s) is on your ladder
In closing, now is the time to be audacious and bold in driving change in diversity, inclusion, and equity within our organizations. You can do it. You can make a difference.
To whom it may concern:
Our hearts and souls are devastated by the oppression, over-policing, and the loss of life in our communicates of color. We believe that Black Lives Matter.
