Technology continues to change how we work. We’ve said goodbye to filing cabinets and hello to business automation.
Technology can now empower business leaders to make better business decisions through access to analytics systems that show real-time data gathered from your teams. But can technology show the impact of diversity in our workplaces, and if so, how?
Why gender diversity matters
Gender diversity isn’t just important for increasing womens’ roles and pay equality, it’s important for the innovation and the future of your organization. Leaders have to solve new and evolving problems every day and diversity brings to this, different perspectives and new approaches.
Better decisions are made when both women and men contribute together. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Union College, and MIT examined the performance of 700 people who were working in groups to see what predicted success. They discovered that individual intelligence wasn’t the best predictor of performance, but rather it was the collective measure of intelligence, and a key predictor of this was having women involved in the group. The researchers suggest that one of the explanations for this is that women tend to be more sensitive to social cues, leading to more event, respectful discussions when problem-solving.
Measure Success
Initiatives to improve gender representation in the workplace are great, but how do you know if they’re successful unless you can measure them? Measurement is key when you introduce a new strategy in your workplace, so how does this fit in with diversity initiatives?
At intelliHR, we’ve developed a truly world-class analytics system that empowers leaders to see where their business is at a glance. To give some examples of how you can measure the success of your diversity initiatives, we’ll be using our own system to show you.
The pay gap
Although significant progress has been made over the last few decades, the gender pay gap still prevails today. While we won’t be going into the many reasons for this, what we can show you is how to discover disparities and fix them using information already at your fingertips.
With intelliHR’s remuneration analytics, you can look at pay levels on a macro and micro level and split it by gender to see if there are any significant gaps.
You can also find when the last remuneration change was given, and look to see if there are any differences within teams or business units by tenure and then layer that with gender data.
Through using these analytics, you can see how your business is tracking with gender parity, identify and address problems and track any initiatives or actions. An important part about advocating for equal wages and opportunities is to prove that you’re setting the standard with measurement.
Feedback
One of the most important things you can do when introducing a policy or strategy of any kind is to get feedback on it. This can be one of the most effective ways to measure its success, as you’re getting responses directly from the source. Gathering feedback during, not after, roll-out also allows your decision-makers to respond in real-time and make changes to assist with implementation.
So how can you use feedback to help with diversity?
At intelliHR, we have forms that can be custom-built to gather data for any purpose and we automatically analyze the data for you (no data analyst required!). You could ask your teams about how inclusive they think your business is, what’s working well, or perhaps what are some areas for improvement.
Feedback is a great way to gather data as it provides a safe space for your team to provide their opinion in a way where it will be available to decision-makers.
Career development
Just like equal pay, equal opportunity is important for achieving parity in the workplace as well as innovation, good problem solving, and all of the other benefits that flow from diversity. Equal opportunity involves the removing of bias from the review process so that meaningful decisions can be made subjectively. With intelliHR, there are a few ways you can help your employees get the career development they need to become future leaders while being subjective.
Training is important for career growth, to upskill your people and enhance performance, which ultimately leads to business growth. But sometimes employees may not feel comfortable asking for training – they might be worried about budget, or think that their position or tenure doesn’t warrant it – and all too often managers are so busy that training slips through the cracks. Our customers love the feature that allows your employees to request training or managers to assign training to be completed.
That’s where the intelliHR analytics system comes in. With our training analytics dashboard, you can easily see which teams or team members are undertaking training, and which aren’t. This allows your business leaders to identify any disparity in the accessibility of training, training investment, and if equal amounts are being spent on career development across genders.
Solving the problem
Technology won’t solve issues of gender in the workplace. But with the right tools, leaders can enact change in their workplace, which is a step towards closing the gender gap.
intelliHR is a people management platform helping HR, leaders, and managers enhance, culture, performance, engagement, and retention. To learn more about how you can capture, visualize and utilize powerful gender and employee insights to drive diversity in your organization, get in touch today.
