Maintaining Momentum

Strategies to create a global, diverse workforce

In the last year, we’ve seen a renewed focus on accountability when it comes to diversity and inclusion efforts across industries. According to Josh Bersin research, inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their market. Due to measured, tangible and intangible effects of diversity, workplaces are striving not only to be more diverse but increasingly more accountable for creating a diverse culture. Aspiring to reach higher and inspiring your employees to be an active part of this change is where it all begins. For organizations to succeed, it’s imperative to drive inclusion to the core of the organization, focus on structural changes, use data to set and measure goals, and create a deep sense of accountability for inclusion metrics.
 

Consider the following when it comes to how your organization can spend time and resources to advocate and drive change globally:

What if companies looked at diversity and inclusion differently? Instead of “doing the right thing,” what would happen if organizations made it difficult for employees to do the “non-inclusive thing.” What if all managers and leaders were expected to be inclusive in their hiring choices, in the choice of who they developed, and promoted? Instead of advocating for the best candidate for the role, managers should look for the best person for their team—and when looking to hire seek to add the skills, background, and experiences their teams lack. Rather than looking for culture fit, look for values fit and culture contribution.
 
Today, corporate leaders have the power to create a ripple effect, but the pay-off can seem like an abstract reality. An inclusive culture drives ROI. For example, according to McKinsey, “Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.” In addition, Deloitte cites that diverse companies have 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee.
 
Creating community and funding employee network groups, so racial and ethnic minorities can feel supported and empowered to lead is just one way that organizations can invest in their future. In return, organizations are then able to have an ear to the ground and listen to what employees are saying at every level to enhance culture. When the ROI of diversity is realized, innovation and creativity can follow.

When it comes to building a successful D&I strategy, it’s important to consider a dynamic approach to getting from where you are, to reaching where you want to be. To do this, organizations must assess the current state of diversity and inclusion in their organization and compare this to their long-term goals. Every data point from organizational demographics, hiring and retention rates, employee satisfaction, specific benefits and learning offering utilization, and so on, is important in determining which actions drive toward a more diverse ecosystem. The power of artificial intelligence to organize, analyze and correlate diverse sets of data, in order to set goals, validate our interventions and drive toward outcomes rather than action.

Measurement is perhaps the most important factor in building a diverse future and cultivating an inclusive culture. Setting KPIs to achieve goals is just one effective way to make every employee feel like they are a part of the same team and working toward the same outcome. Taking this a step further, technology can also help bring awareness to daily interactions and remind employees and managers alike of their unconscious biases. Data is only powerful when utilized intelligently. By measuring crucial data points and mining this valuable data, organizations can continue to track progress toward a more diverse future.

In line with diversity fostering innovation, at SAP we invest in some of the most cutting-edge startups in the B2B space. We know that many of today’s biggest companies were startups, and if we want a diverse ecosystem in the future we need to invest in underrepresented founders now. In January, SAP.io announced its “No Boundaries” initiative. Focusing on inclusive entrepreneurship, SAP pledges to commit up to 40 percent of the investable capital in the SAP.iO Fund. This initiative builds on its already strong foundation-- the SAP.iO Foundries program has accelerated nearly 100 early-stage software startups, more than 30 percent of which are founded or led by women or other minority entrepreneurs.
 
SAP.io is also supporting technology that drives inclusion. For example, Cultivate, an SAP.io startup provides inclusion analytics to companies. It continuously runs in the background and makes managers and employees aware of how they communicate with one another in terms of frequency, tone, politeness, etc, and it coaches them real-time on how they can improve their interactions with different employees. For managers, this can be a valuable, unbiased way to evaluate how they interact with different employees, and identify areas where they might unknowingly be showing favoritism or on the flip side, where they might be unintentionally inhibiting opportunity.
 
Another SAP.io accelerator company, Atipica, has built a proprietary technology that helps organizations build diversity and inclusion into the way that they source, recruit and hire talent. It also helps them leverage the power of their own applicant tracking system and resurface candidates who may have applied for roles in the past and may be a fit for new job postings, a strategy that has led companies to reassess thousands of applicants AND re-engage with them.
 
Reimagining a future that’s representative of all people will help make companies more prosperous. In addition to paying economic and social dividends in the long run, diversity creates an environment where everyone is able to be their best selves. To leverage inclusion as a competitive advantage, it’s important to take into account what goes into creating a diverse and inclusive culture and who is responsible for upholding these standards. A culture of inclusion has moved beyond building programs to driving structural and organizational interventions, promoting behavioral changes that lead to inclusion, and creating clear accountability for everyone with measurable goals.

Judith Michelle Williams is SVP, Global Head of People Sustainability & Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at SAP. She has more than 15 years of experience at the forefront of the culture change movement in technology and entertainment, with a deep focus on analytics and strategies to identify and disrupt bias in social systems and corporate culture. Prior to her role at SAP, she founded an organization that consults with startups, venture capitalists and accelerators on embedding diversity and inclusion into the foundations of their organizational cultures. Williams has also served as global head of diversity for Dropbox as well as diversity programs manager at Google. Connect Judith Michelle Williams Follow @judithmwilliams