3 Types of Technology To Elevate Your Company’s DE&I Strategy
Discover how companies can use hiring, data, and communications tech to support their diversity, equity and inclusion programs this year.
With DE&I becoming crucial for companies, a few platforms can support organizations’ efforts. Colin Dinnie, DE&I program manager at Wistia, discusses how companies can use hiring, data, and communications technologies to support their diversity, equity, and inclusion program in 2023.
Having a strong diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategy is imperative for companies to be successful in today’s world. Not only do DE&I-focused companies perform better overall and have a higher bottom line, but research from Glassdoor also shows that 3 in 4 job seekers and workers prefer diverse companies. As the population of the United States also becomes more diverse, workplaces should reflect this heterogeneity and work to ensure that people with different backgrounds, experiences and skillsets have a seat at the table and feel supported.
Making DE&I a priority in your organization and laying out an initial strategy are crucial first steps. But you will need a system to track your progress and stay accountable. To do so, many companies create DE&I Reports to outline their overarching plans, demonstrate data trends over time and reflect on what is working and what is not. One of the top takeaways from Wistia’s first annual DE&I Report is that technology platforms and tools have been a major asset in helping us boost our diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Here are three types of technology platforms to support your DE&I efforts in 2023:
Hiring Technology
Your DE&I strategy likely starts at the hiring phase. Take a closer look at your hiring practices to find opportunities to build more diverse teams from the ground up. In the past, Wistia primarily relied on inbound recruiting and focused on attracting qualified candidates. But we found that the people applying through referrals, our website or online job postings were less diverse overall than we had hoped. It was not until we pivoted to add outbound recruiting to our strategy that we could move the needle on expanding the makeup of our teams at all levels.
To enable your talent team to search for and engage with qualified candidates from various backgrounds, consider recruiting tools to help recruiters mitigate biases in the hiring process, evaluate candidates objectively and keep DE&I top of mind (especially in males- and white-dominated industries like tech or finance). You can also empower your recruiters to check out job boards and platforms that curate underrepresented, equity-seeking groups.
Once candidates reach the interview stage, intelligence software can allow your recruiters to have more productive conversations with candidates and reflect on interviews afterward for insights. For example, the software records interviews and creates transcripts, freeing up interviewers to be present with candidates in the moment. The playback and note-taking features are especially helpful for recruiters who need to recall specific details from their conversations or share clips or highlights with their colleagues. Interview intelligence platforms also increase transparency and consistency throughout the hiring process — key for any company serious about DE&I.
See More: Do You Use These 8 Recruitment Technologies for Hiring?
Data Analytics Technology
When establishing DE&I goals at the company level, think beyond hiring quotas or specific diversity ratios. These goals might be helpful in some cases, but you will risk accidentally making employees feel tokenized or suspect that they were hired for reasons other than their qualifications. To reduce these risks, set more directional goals like “move toward gender parity,” “expand career growth paths,” or “create a more data-driven compensation framework” and use data to inform you of your progress, rather than having it limit or define you. Work on a strategy to collect as much quantitative and qualitative data as possible and then analyze it to measure how far you’ve come and where there’s room to improve.
The more data you collect, the more complete a picture you will have of where your organization is at with its DE&I initiatives. For example, Wistia collects employee demographic information and uses an employee-centric platform to easily visualize and leverage this information across all other data points (pay, level, tenure, last promotion, performance, etc.). Doing so helps us measure progress against our goals and inform our decisions.
Whatever data your organization decides to collect, ensure that you are using analytics technology to help you identify trends and patterns so you can make intentional adjustments.
See More: Why Your Data Analytics Doesn’t Work
Communications Technology
Finally, when thinking about how technology can improve DE&I, do not overlook the digital communications platforms your teams use every day to collaborate and talk to each other.
Whether your company uses Slack, Microsoft Teams, a different messaging platform or only email, consider how these tools can promote your company’s values and foster DE&I. For example, encouraging employees to add pronouns to their email signatures (if they want to) is an easy way to show respect for all identities. After all, people want to work at a company that allows them to be their most authentic selves. Slack’s AllyBot tool is another simple tool to promote inclusive language in employee messaging. Many companies also choose to have dedicated messaging channels for their employee resource groups, or ERGs, to come together and find community.
Also, recognize that not all your employees show up with the same knowledge or vocabulary around DE&I topics. Just because some employees know what the LGBTQIA2S+ acronym stands for, or understand concepts like microaggressions or code-switching, does not mean that everyone else does. To help close gaps in understanding, companies can use digital technology to find and share resources. People learn in different ways, so make sure you give employees options for how they can consume content — videos to watch, podcasts to listen to, blogs to read, etc. By increasing the accessibility and availability of resources, people will be more motivated to engage.
Technology plays a huge role in every industry and has the potential to change every facet of how we achieve goals in the workplace. Hiring, data analytics, and communications software are only three of the many digital tools at your company’s disposal to help your company launch DE&I initiatives and sustain your program long-term.
What technologies are you using to support your DE&I efforts this year? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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