12/12/2019

Daily Buzz: Using Data to Diversify Your Organization

It’s important for organizations to be diverse

No matter the industry, it’s important for organizations to be diverse. A report by McKinsey & Company demonstrated that companies with the most ethnically diverse executive teams are 33 percent more likely to financially outperform their peers.

“But while companies understand why they need to have a more diverse workforce, many aren’t sure how to make it happen,” Sandy Cross and Porter Braswell said in Harvard Business Review.

How do you promote diversity within your organization? First, gather data to find out why your organization is not reaching diverse candidates.

“Having accurate data is fundamental to any inclusion and diversity effort,” Cross and Braswell said. “Many people anecdotally have a hunch about what the barriers that prevent diverse candidates from applying are, but gathering actual data points motivates, validates, or disproves decision makers and empowers leaders to take action.”

Cross and Braswell highlighted PGA of America as an example. To increase diversity, PGA partnered with Jopwell, a career advancement platform for Black, Latinx and Native American students and professionals. Jopwell collected feedback from its community and found the top two reasons why people were not applying for jobs in the golf industry were a lack of awareness of opportunities (27 percent) and a lack of access to contacts in the industry (26 percent).

“Many other companies are facing similar challenges in modernizing and diversifying their workforces and would benefit from taking time to hear from the candidates they’re trying to reach,” Cross and Braswell said.

From there, your organization can create a plan of action that is supported by data.

Please select this link to read the original article from Associations Now.