Beyond the numbers: how data fuels impactful inclusion

As we embrace the theme ‘Impact Matters’ for National Inclusion Week (NIW) 2024, one key focus is the power of data. Emily Pattinson, Senior IES Programme Lead, details not only the importance of data in your inclusion work but also how to measure the impact of your NIW and other similar activities.

Before you can truly embed impactful, meaningful and sustainable inclusion into your organisation, you need an evidence base to understand if what you are doing is making a difference. So often I see proactive organisations full of passionate people wanting to make a difference, but the activities they undertake just don’t land very well. This is nothing to do with the activity, the people or even the organisation, it is to do with the decision making. We wouldn’t make financial decisions without financial data. We wouldn’t make health and safety decisions without health and safety data. So let’s stop making inclusion decisions without inclusion data.

Where should I start with collecting inclusion data?

Inclusion data comes in two main forms: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data is, quite simply, information that can be measured. It can be counted and given a numerical value—such as length in centimetres or earnings in euro. If you want to ask questions such as “How many?” or “How often?”, you’ll find the answers in quantitative data.

Qualitative data on the other hand, involves collecting and examining non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or to generate new ideas. To build a strong evidence base for your inclusion decisions you need to be collecting a range of both types of data.

How do I collect diversity data?

If you are looking to collect quantitative data, you will start with staff diversity and lifecycle data. Staff diversity data is the information about personal characteristics, which can help you understand the make up of your organisation and identify any gaps. We recommend you collect this data at onboarding through a HR system/database that staff can update throughout their employment. You should seek to collect data the characteristics protected in your country’s legislation. For the UK, we would recommend you collect: age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, gender reassignment, religion/belief and sexual orientation. All questions should have a ‘prefer not to say’ options and have all options offered in alphabetical order to avoid assumptions of hierarchy.

For global organisations it is important to understand where there are any existing requirements in place to collect, monitor or report on diversity data. For example, in China, it is mandatory to report on disability data therefore gathering this data is essential, whereas in France it is currently illegal to collect data around ethnicity. So it is important when collecting data across different countries that you may need to take a flexible ‘glocal’ approach to ensure you are collecting good quality data in a legal and culturally sensitive way.

Lifecycle data is often collected in various ways across the organisation e.g. staff engagement, sickness, grievances, job applicant numbers, staff retention/leavers. Understanding this data by different characteristics of groups can help you to identify potential barriers or challenges faced by your people. This is also where you may use qualitative data collection, such as interviews and listening circles, to gain a deeper understanding of any patterns highlighted in the quantitative data.

What if people don’t want to share their data?

You should be aiming for data disclosure of 75% or above for all characteristics in your HR system, this ensures you have a representative sample of your organisation for decision making. You can use your data if you don’t have disclosure rates this high, but always treat the outcomes with a bit of caution.

Low disclosure rates are very common and is often a sign of the wider organisation not understanding why you want the data and how you will use it. Communication is the key to building the trust to disclose. Communicate regularly through corporate channels to all staff about why you are collecting the data, who will see it, how it will be stored and how it will be used to inform decision making. Where possible these communications should come from senior leadership to show that inclusion is an organisational priority, not just a HR initiative. Campaigns such as “no decision about me, without me” are often helpful to generate interest in data disclosure.

Additionally, using data in all your communications and campaigns about inclusion helps your people see how their data is driving the development of a workplace that directly benefits them. By communicating regularly about your inclusion objectives, mission and values you build a strong foundation for your inclusion activities and events to build on, rather than it feeling like events/topics are chosen at random. For example, “Our diversity data shows that 65% of our staff are male between the ages of 25 – 55, so this year we have ensured our staff benefits programme includes free materials and support around prostate cancer screening”. The more people see data being use for decisions, the more they are likely to disclose.