SurveyMonkey, Paradigm Say New Template Helps Measure Inclusion

Diversity Technology

Consulting company Paradigm Strategy’s partnered with another brand name to advance further into the world of building inclusive workplaces. Working with the firm, SurveyMonkey released a new survey template for companies to take a data-driven approach to measuring inclusion.

Diversity TechnologyThe new Belonging & Inclusion template is designed to help companies identify areas to focus on in order to foster an inclusive workplace for underrepresented groups across race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and age, among other factors.

“For diversity and inclusion efforts to succeed, we must look beyond demographics and focus on creating an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive,” said Becky Cantieri, SurveyMonkey’s chief people officer. Her company, she said, believes “data is a valuable way to get us there.”

Paradigm CEO Joelle Emerson said “there’s a common misconception that inclusion can’t be measured,” even though more employers are analyzing their workforces with an eye toward increasing diversity. Inclusion can be measured, she argued, by tracking factors such as objectivity, voice and belonging. Do that will give companies “a clear sense of opportunities to build a more inclusive culture,” she said.

In April, recruiting platform provider Greenhouse worked with Paradigm to launch a “holistic” tech solution to help companies integrate inclusive practices throughout their recruiting and hiring processes.

Using social science research from Stanford University, SurveyMonkey and Paradigm developed a set of measures to assess an employee’s sense of inclusion in the workplace. After testing the methodology and survey questions with over 10,000 U.S. workers, the companies said they found three key areas that impact whether underrepresented groups feel included in the workplace.

  • Growth Mindset: This is the belief that people can evolve and learn, as opposed to a fixed mindset, which suggests talent, abilities and intelligence are fixed. A company with a fixed mindset views talent as something a worker has or doesn’t have. The perception that success depends on special talents that can’t be learned can hinder feelings of belonging and growth. In SurveyMonkey’s and Paradigm’s study, 21 percent of workers said their company has a fixed mindset. The number was higher for underrepresented groups – nearly three in 10 Black and Hispanic employees (28 percent versus 17 percent of white workers).
  • Belonging Uncertainty occurs when workers wonder if others will include, value and respect them. A quarter of workers told SurveyMonkey-Paradigm that the don’t feel like they belong at their company. That jumped to nearly one in three for black workers.
  • Objectivity is the perception that advancement is based on fair and transparent criteria. While 60 percent of employees overall said their compensation was fair relative to others at their company, less than half of black workers (48 percent) agreed with that stateme

The Belonging & Inclusion template is designed to measure sentiment in these three areas. The template will be available in SurveyMonkey’s template library.

The idea of belonging is an important component of retention, noted Sarah Cho, SurveyMonkey’s research director. “Our research found that people who anticipate staying at their company for the next two years are more than twice as likely to feel they belong than employees who plan to leave.” In terms of diversity, she said, the ability to measure sentiment “is key in helping organizations to break down the divide about whether there are still significant obstacles facing racial and ethnic minorities and women, and to understand what is driving those employee experiences.”

Image geralt / Pixabay

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