6 September

Measuring Diversity and Inclusion: How to make it work

The Second Power of Inclusion Breakfast workshop was held on Wednesday 4^th September at Barclays, with over 50 attendees. The aim of the breakfast was to share different tools that businesses can use to collect useful Diversity and Inclusion data, create trust within organisations to ensure that people are willing to share and lastly, how D&I data can inform business decisions.

Tamara Box, Managing Partner EME at Reed Smith, during the Chair’s address shared that “setting a measurable goal is the genesis of change management”. She also included why she was personally invested in this topic, given her experience with the 30% Club.

Ged Salzano, Head of Leadership Talent and D&I at Barclays welcomed the audience and shared that his role involves “ensuring that Diversity and Inclusion are woven into the fabric of Barclays”. Ged also imparted data led insights from Barclays that are helping to empower line managers to take control of creating inclusive work cultures.

Katy Bennett, Diversity and Inclusion Consulting Director at PwC, highlighted that businesses need to take an evidence-based approach to diversity, and don’t need a lot of data to create a meaningful impact within the business. One of the key points from her talk was that, it is important to use data outside of HR to be able to get a full understanding of what is happening within the business and then using this to set targets based on the individual business and not what competitors are doing.

Fiona Young, Content Director and Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging shared her insights into the journey of Hive Learning who are a start-up company who have chosen to embed diversity and inclusion when making business decisions. Fiona’s top tips included, being transparent with all colleagues within the business about why diversity data is being collected and how it will be used, giving people the tools to self-learn and then measuring the action’s taken by individuals and giving informal praise when possible.

During the workshops, attendees were able to share with each other successes and challenges that they were facing. The questions that guided this conversation were:

• What are your experiences of collecting and using data in your organisation?
• What challenges are you facing, or what examples can you share that have worked well?

The morning ended with a Q+A panel that started with reflections from the different tables on what was discussed and ended with top tips from the speakers on what businesses need to consider when beginning measuring D&I data:

Katy Bennett shared that humility and transparency in the approach should be at the core, this was followed by Fiona Young who raised the importance of understanding why you are doing this as a business. Finally, Ged Salzano stated that accountability was his great priority.

Another great breakfast workshop that allowed for people to share and exchange ideas on how best to measure diversity and inclusion data, and ensure that it is at the forefront of business decisions.