Developing DEI KPIs and Aspirational Goals

Employee engagement challenges
Need for Goal Setting & DEI KPI Development

Our client, a global technology company, had recently hired their first global head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. This new DEI leader, with the full support of their CEO, knew that they had a significant challenge in front of them. To that point, the company had no clear direction or framework, including processes and objectives, to guide their DEI efforts.

Short- and long-term DEI strategies were needed, especially given their high-tech, engineering-based culture. These metrics needed to be built upon metrics and quantifiable targets developed from sound and well supported analysis and research. Metrics were needed to address key questions such as: Where do we stand in our representation levels? Where should we be?  What are realistic targets and objectives that we should set? And, what is the right set of KPIs that should be measured and monitored to drive our DEI initiatives?

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“What-If?” projections modeling built upon ET’s multi-year proprietary diversity databaseTo begin, in order to develop a set of diversity KPI, our approach included:

• Performing a detailed analysis of the client’s data and representation levels across a broad set of demographics company-wide 
• Examining this data at both a regional and organizational level; 
• Benchmarking these metrics against regional labor pool statistics by both specific job type and geographic market; and,
• Benchmarking their representation against key competitors in the industry by leveraging our proprietary database. 

This benchmarking helped to establish parameters for setting diversity KPIs and associated aspirational goals.

At Exponential Talent, we have been measuring, monitoring and capturing public disclosures of diversity data for nearly a decade across a wide range of leading companies that span multiple industries. This allows us to guide our clients with regard to competitive benchmarks and provide insight on how their representation has changed over time, We also document associated hiring levels that correlate with these changes.

Once the set of KPIs were evaluated and a final set of metrics were determined, we still needed to address the question of what the appropriate short and long term aspirational goals should be. To develop these targets, we undertook the follow actions:

• Using our proprietary database, we identified historical changes in representation across the technology industry and the associated hiring levels that drove these changes.
• Using our proprietary projections model, and the industry analysis noted above, we performed a multi-year “what-if?” analysis that explored various changes in representation based on changes in company growth, along with demographic-specific hiring and turnover levels.

Combining these “what-if?” analyses and measuring results against the earlier benchmarking values, long term aspirational targets were developed for each diversity KPI.​

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The key outcomes were:

• The key outcomes were:
  
• Client has an expansive list of recruiting opportunities as well as a carefully curated list tailored to their specific needs
  
• Client is better equipped to decide on how to invest resources for establishing partnerships externally
  
• Client has expanded resources for sourcing strategies