Samantha, a DEI consultant, left the corporate office, her chest tight. The executives had listened to her presentation on pay inequities, but whenever she raised the more sensitive issue of systemic bias, she was met with a dismissive “Let’s not overcomplicate things.” Alone in her car, she feels the weight of not being able to spark real change for the employees she’d interviewed…
Ever felt tokenized like Samantha in your efforts to stimulate diversity, equity and inclusion? This article will arm you with some tools to take the sting out of DEI, and make progress. The keyphrase is this: Actionable DEI assessment.
DEI assessment – sometimes also referred to as “DE&I” or “EDI” assessment, or even less broadly as “equity” assessment – is a structured evaluation designed to identify weaknesses in an organization’s posture regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Depending on an organization’s size, industry and structure, one can look into various areas. Nonetheless, here are the objective principles a DEI assessment is supposed to gauge – either separately or altogether:
- Diversity: Representation of diverse groups within the organization, including gender, race, ethnicity, age, disability, and other identity factors.
- Equity: Fairness in organizational policies, pay structures, promotions, and access to professional development opportunities.
- Inclusion: The sense of belonging and ability to contribute authentically at work.
Actionable DEI assessments go beyond just measuring and diagnosing gaps or problems. They deliver practical recommendations that help organizations turn insights into measurable progress. They focus on sparking real change, empowering leaders with tools to address systemic issues.
There are a number of equity-focused tools that can help address specific DEI challenges. Understanding these tools and how they complement each other is key to making meaningful advancements.
One significant area a DEI evaluation can examine, revolves around hiring practices and recruitment pipelines to identify gaps in representation.
In fast-growing organizations, the pace of recruitment is so high that recruiters often gravitate toward habitual profiles. Talent solution platforms like Greenhouse provide analytics on candidate pools, tracking metrics such as gender, ethnicity, and sourcing channels. This helps evaluate whether hiring practices are attracting and advancing diverse candidates.
As an organization or external consultant, you can analyze salary data across demographics to reveal salary disparities.
There are software solutions like MarketPayTM by PayScale that help organizations uncover and address gaps in compensation. Not only do tools like these keep their finger on the pulse of the market to optimize salary budgets, but a tool like MarketPayTM also offers pre-configured dashboards for pay equity reporting.
I ran a quick test, using a piece of a Pointerpro job vacancy for a Customer Success Officer. For the record: The vacancy posting was written before any of us had stumbled on this type of tool. The result? Our description seems to use more female-coded words. So, technically, we could have evened this out to make sure we don’t miss out on any strong male candidates.
Common obstacles for developing a sound DEI posture in a company are siloed structures, poor communication and underestimating – or simply not knowing – how much information and culture is spread organically.
Platforms like OrgMapper use network mapping to assess who interacts with whom in the organization, and understand who influences which network.
Of course a tried and tested tool to understand how an audience or a group of people thinks – well-known to product marketers in FMCG – is organizing focus groups.
Focus groups can be a qualitative method for gathering insights into how employees perceive and experience DEI within the organization.
To make focus groups actionable:
- Ensure groups are diverse and representative of the workforce to capture a broad range of perspectives.
- Facilitate discussions around key DEI topics, such as feelings of belonging, barriers to advancement, and perceptions of organizational equity.
- Use experienced moderators trained to navigate sensitive conversations, encouraging open and honest dialogue.
DEI focus groups are a valuable tool to complement the previously mentioned data-driven approaches. They provide the stories and context behind the numbers.
A true multi-purpose tool in the context of navigating DEI is the questionnaire-based DEI assessment. Why “multi-purpose?”
Because a tool that allows you to build questionnaires – like Pointerpro, but also generic tools in your software stack like Google or Microsoft Forms – enables you to address different audiences from different angles. Let me explain through a couple of examples.
Various types of questionnaire-based DEI assessments:
- Employee sentiment surveys allow you to gauge how employees feel about the workplace environment, inclusivity in general, and about how psychologically safe they feel.
- Cultural sensitivity assessments: Evaluate awareness and sensitivity to cultural differences within the workplace.
- Leadership self-assessments enable organization leaders to reflect on their own attitudes, behaviors and impact on DEI.
- DEI training effectiveness assessments evaluate the impact of DEI training programs and identify areas that need further improvement.
- Supplier diversity evaluations are complementary tools to identify if procurement criteria are inclusive and equitable. This becomes especially important and relevant for large corporations with a cultural, or societal impact.
- DEI “diagnostics” or maturity scans are built and used by DEI experts who often consult for various organizations. They basically score each of them based on their pre-conceived framework. As they serve more organizations they also use benchmark data on DEI policy to improve their assessments
Tell me if I’m missing something
Have you come across any other useful tools for DEI assessment, or that contribute in any way to DEI and DEI reporting that should? I’m more than happy to learn about them and talk about them in the article. Feel free to contact me.
Whenever someone assesses DEI, like the consultant, Samantha, from our introduction, the question is of course: “What are the right standards?”
There are numerous DEI frameworks to define such standards, but there is no single universally recognized or official standard. Most frameworks are developed by institutes, organizations, or DEI experts – based on their research and expertise. Often their framework is tailored to specific industries, goals, or cultural contexts.
A few examples of evergreen DEI frameworks worth looking into for inspiration:
- The GDEIB (Global DEI Benchmarks) framework, which is a comprehensive benchmarking framework, including 15 benchmark categories to be exact.
- The APA EDI framework by the American Psychological association, which is a principle-based guide that emphasizes on applying an “equity lens” to decision-making. It offers reflective questions and principles rather than rigid benchmarks.
- The MCOD (Multicultural Organizational Development) framework, which is a maturity model designed to help organizations assess their current DEI posture and take actionable steps to progress toward becoming fully inclusive. It outlines six developmental stages, ranging from exclusionary (actively discriminatory) to multicultural (actively inclusive and equitable).
I particularly like the latter for its simplicity. What sets MCOD apart is its focus on continuous improvement. It’s not just about identifying where you are but about providing a clear path for moving forward. It sets the stage for actionable DEI assessment, because it automatically raises the question: “How do we go from the stage we’re in to a more mature stage?”
Instead of losing ourselves too much into the details of these existing frameworks here, let’s pinpoint the recurring focal points. These are important to consider in case you’re thinking of developing your own specialized DEI model.
To assess the DEI posture of organizations, a well-rounded DEI framework should at least address the following foundational components:
- Recruitment and talent acquisition: Evaluation of hiring practices, recruitment pipelines, and candidate experience.
- Organizational culture: Gauging inclusion, psychological safety, and employee engagement.
- Policies and governance: Assessment of policies in place that may or may not result in systemic inequity for diverse groups. Relevant topics here are things like pay equity, parental leave, flexible work, etc.
- Career development and advancement: Analyzing whether there’s equitable access to mentorship, training, and promotions.
- Accountability: Identifying what methods or systems are in place to measure real engagement toward DEI in the different levels of an organization, including leadership.
The five bullet points above are a crucial baseline. Here are a few tips on how to differentiate your own framework and serve an organization’s goals and context even better:
- Scope beyond the workforce: Decide whether to extend your DEI focus on employees and internal policy to areas like supplier diversity, customer engagement, or community impact.
- A blended approach to measurement: Often frameworks use rather qualitative insights (feelings, attitudes, etc.), while others rely on quantitative data (numbers). Develop a model to turn qualitative insights into quantitative data as well so you can bring it all together.
In our own familiar world of questionnaire-based assessments, this is what we call “custom scoring.” Here’s a short video that explains the principle:
- Adaptability for global organizations: If your DEI framework aims to help organizations that operate in multiple regions, ensure it accounts for cultural nuances, legal contexts, and regional variations in DEI challenges.
- Adaptability for global organizations: If your DEI framework aims to help organizations that operate in multiple regions, ensure it accounts for cultural nuances, legal contexts, and regional variations in DEI challenges.
The thing with frameworks – DEI frameworks and other frameworks alike – is that they are theoretical. You need tools to actually apply the frameworks.
As mentioned earlier, questionnaire building platforms are useful DEI assessment tools because with every questionnaire you build, you get to ask targeted questions to a targeted audience. Therefore, you get to gauge DEI from different perspectives and angles. And ultimately, on top of any specific report, you can compile the findings and actionable insights in an aggregated report.
But before getting into doing DEI reporting, let’s go over some guidelines on how to make DEI assessment questionnaires as effective as possible:
- Optimize for clarity: DEI is a topic of real expertise and therefore it’s easy to let jargon slip in. It can also be culturally specific. Formulate any questions so that they are as straightforward as possible.
- Focus on psychological safety: DEI is also quite delicate. Ultimately, a DEI assessment is bound to confront your respondent with current shortcomings in their policies or in certain personal inclinations. Therefore it’s crucial to clearly communicate about confidentiality. Also avoid any judgmental language, as it will could bias responses. You may even consider a “prefer not to answer” response option for very sensitive questions.
- Use dynamic and tailored questioning: DEI concerns very diverse audiences, even within a single organization. By using branching logic (a.k.a survey logic), you create tailored paths based on previous answers. This is very useful if you want to simply publish one assessment link and let different audiences respond to the role-specific questions.
- Balance concision with depth: From the point-of-view of most respondents, DEI will not be “job-critical.” To optimize response rates, steer away from overloading them with too many questions, and avoid survey fatigue. Use a diversity of question types that allow for scoring, and for in-depth insights, allow for extra input, using open-ended questions.
- Provide immediate value (feedback): A DEI assessment should be about two-way communication between you and each respondent. So, last but not least, it’s a good strategy to reward respondents with instant insights. For instance, during the questionnaire, you could give them intermediate scores on question groups – (sub)criteria of your DEI framework – and give them access to get complete insights and recommendations, right after completion of the full questionnaire.
On that last point, ideally a respondent gets to see a simple button at the end of the questionnaire to download a personalized DEI report.
Now, how exactly is that possible? We’ll answer that question in the section below.
What turns a DEI assessment into an actionable DEI assessment, is the feedback that’s attached to it. In other words: The DEI report.
Typically, a DEI report will be aimed at either the individuals who provided the answers to the various DEI questions, or at the organization itself – in other words, the HR or dedicated DEI department Here’s a set of tips that stand out for both:
- Incorporate empathy and positivity: The feedback that your report may need to provide can be somewhat confronting to an individual. Often they may not be aware of their own biases. Focus on relating the feedback to personal growth opportunities, and also be sure to highlight how the individual is already contributing to DEI.
- Offer concrete next steps: Many people are not insensitive at all to DEI – especially after the self-reflection that comes from a DEI assessment – but they’re stuck at the level of implementing actions. Dedicate a section in your report to concrete actions the individual can take, based on their combined answers to certain questions or certain subscores in their assessment. That way you’ll offer challenges that are relevant to their roles and also small enough to realize, yet big enough to spark some change. (E.g., joining a DEI working group, read into useful resources, sign up for webinars…)
- Use visual representations (E.g., charts): Show. Don’t just tell. The last thing you want is to give people the chance to dismiss your feedback as “boring” and throw out the baby with bathwater. Visuals and icons to explain any theoretical input will make the information easier to absorb. But also include simple graphs and charts to highlight important anomolies, and even to benchmark the individual respondent to their peer group.
- Focus on benchmarks: From an institutional perspective it’s crucial to see how the organization is doing, compared to their industry. The last thing any CEO or CHRO wants is to lag behind competitors. It’s also important to see whether DEI expectations are met organization-wide. So, use aggregated data and external data to present internal and external benchmarks. It’s more likely to trigger action.
- Offer a plan: Include a phased plan with measurable goals (E.g., “Increase awareness of DEI policies by 20% within 6 months”). DEI frameworks that are based on a maturity model (like the MCOD framework we discussed in an earlier section) lend themselves perfectly to this type of setup. Outline a list of actionable recommendations next to each defined objective (E.g., Signing up employees for workshops, offering training programs, etc.)
- Also show strengths: A DEI assessment is meant to commit organizations to improving diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Therefore, the story you present after conducting an assessment cannot only be a negative one. Highlight where the organization scores well. It will motivate C-level to communicate more openly around their DEI efforts – both internally and publicly – and commit to continuous improvement more explicitly.
The automated reporting functionality means that we don’t have to write, review and send through reports manually. This saves us massive amounts of time. Our members get results and reports instantaneously. – James Walker (Head of Product New Development at WISE)
WISE turned their powerful DEI framework into an efficient DEI assessment and reporting tool
Check out the full interview here
How to build automated DEI reports with Pointerpro
Here’s a quick introduction on how Pointerpro works, brought to you by one of our product Experts, Chris.
“We use Pointerpro for all types of surveys and assessments across our global business, and employees love its ease of use and flexible reporting.”
Director at Alere
“I give the new report builder 5 stars for its easy of use. Anyone without coding experience can start creating automated personalized reports quickly.”
CFO & COO at Egg Science
“You guys have done a great job making this as easy to use as possible and still robust in functionality.”
Account Director at Reed Talent Solutions
“It’s a great advantage to have formulas and the possibility for a really thorough analysis. There are hundreds of formulas, but the customer only sees the easy-to-read report. If you’re looking for something like that, it’s really nice to work with Pointerpro.”
Country Manager Netherlands at Better Minds at Work
There are many angles to look at when conducting a DEI assessment. Depending on the tools you have, you can zoom in on specific areas.
The most versatile DEI assessment tool is a questionnaire-based assessment. It allows you to zoom in on different internal DEI perspectives (various groups of people within the organization, the HR department and even external DEI perspectives (suppliers, customers, partners, etc.).
After the data collection, you can realize valuable DEI reports: A process that can even be automated with the use of a report building tool.
Get in touch with Pointerpro, if you’d like to find out more about how our platform can help.
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About the author:
Jeroen De Rore
As Creative Copywriter at Pointerpro, Jeroen thinks and writes about the challenges professional service providers find on their paths. He is a tech optimist with a taste for nostalgia and storytelling.
