Improving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Through Strategic Workforce Planning

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have taken their long-overdue place as a top priority for many organizations. Laudable goals have been set, and initiatives launched, to expand representation and access to all racial groups, genders and gender identities, sexual orientations, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups. But DEI initiatives don’t exist in a vacuum – if organizations are serious about DEI, they must be strategic. They must examine how DEI initiatives intersect with other organizational constraints and business needs. This need not compromise DEI; rather it can help clarify the boundary of what is currently possible and explore ways to push that boundary.

Suppose an organization is attempting to improve female representation within its managerial ranks. It’s intuitive that the rate of female promotions to managers will be a key driver of this diversity. At the same time, there are other, less intuitive drivers that also must be considered. For example, many organizations have constraints in place to keep from becoming too top-heavy, seeking to keep the manager-to-employee ratio below a certain threshold. This constraint can have the side effect of slowing progress toward diversity goals, as it limits the number of new managerial positions that might be filled by women. In some cases, it may be feasible to relax this manager-to-employee constraint in order to accelerate progress toward diversity. But how can an organization evaluate whether this might be feasible and worthwhile?

Another driver of diversity is headcount growth and how it varies across the organization. Some areas of the organization will be better poised to enhance diversity than others – perhaps they have a larger female talent pool from which to draw, or an established track record of hiring and promoting female employees at a high rate. If headcount growth can be concentrated in these areas of the organization, diversity goals might be attained more quickly. But how can the organization evaluate which areas are best poised to enhance diversity, and how can it gauge the potential benefits of shifting growth toward these areas?

These questions call for good technology. DEI goals must be quantified and tracked in the context of a comprehensive model that connects them to the wider system of organizational trends and constraints. This approach can precisely quantify how certain organizational goals might be leveraged to improve DEI, while others that limit DEI may need to be revisited. A good workforce planning solution can capture this complexity and distill it down into a series of metrics, graphics, and levers. This puts the power to enhance DEI directly in the hands of HR.