How people analytics creates diversity and workforce productivity
Two of the world’s biggest management consulting groups have found a simple way for companies to increase their workforce productivity.
It’s to take diversity and inclusion more seriously.
Studies from McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group found that companies with above-average levels of ethnic and gender diversity were not only more productive, but also more innovative and profitable.
Of course, the more productive a workforce is, the easier it is for companies to manage.
Diversity brings other benefits. Hult International Business School says organisations with diverse workforces:
- Find it easier to attract and retain talent
- Understand their customers better
- Have superior market knowledge
Conversely, companies that score poorly on diversity and inclusion struggle with recruitment. A study by employer review platform Glassdoor found:
- 32% of workers would not apply to a job at a company where there is a lack of diversity among its workforce
- 37% would not apply to a job at a company where there are disparities in employee satisfaction ratings among different ethnic/racial groups
How to measure diversity in your workplace
Improvements in workforce productivity don’t happen by accident. Companies need to create policies to promote ethnic and gender diversity. Just as importantly, they need to measure the results.
As management guru Peter Drucker famously said: “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” That’s why people analytics – or the collection of HR data about employees and performance – is so important.
If you want to assess how your company is doing in terms of diversity and inclusion, your HR department needs to:
- Analyse the demographics of your talent
- Measure how they’re performing
- Track how they’re progressing through the company
That will tell you, for example, whether a particular racial group is underrepresented when it comes to hiring or whether a particular gender is underrepresented in terms of promotions.
With that in mind, the Agile HR Analytics solution has a dashboard for diversity, as you’ll see below and in this live interactive demo
This people analytics solution, which is built on Microsoft Power BI, can help your company make data-driven HR decisions. So when you take steps to promote diversity and inclusion in your workplace, you’ll be doing so based on facts rather than hunches.
How to promote diversity in your workplace
Companies that want to improve their workforce productivity need to get serious about improving their diversity and inclusion. That, in turn, requires investment in an HR analytics solution, like Agile HR Analytics.
Here’s why. In theory, it’s easy for a company to improve its racial diversity and gender diversity. All you need to do is set a target; use people analytics software like Agile HR Analytics to capture how you’re currently performing; and make a plan to bridge the gap.
In practice, though, making sustained progress on workplace diversity is much harder to achieve, because it requires a long-term investment of time and effort.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. HR departments need to use people analytics to measure the company’s ongoing performance, to make sure it’s on course to achieve its goals.
And what will companies get in return? Greater workforce productivity, better recruitment outcomes and higher-performing teams.
Agile HR Analytics can help your HR department build a more diverse workplace. For more information, email info@agile-hr-analytics.com or fill in this contact form.
