Diversity rising up the Agenda

  I seem to be have been having lots of conversations about diversity recently so was interested to see a new report from the CIPD and Bernard Hodes, 'Diversity and Inclusion - Fringe or Fundamental?' suggesting that 57% of employers say diversity and inclusion will become more important over the next five years.

83% of organisations have an articulated strategy, written policy or set of guidelines relating to diversity and inclusion and 40% are using metrics - mainly demographic data and employee survey results - around diversity.

All good news!  Less positive however is that most of these strategies are devoted to compliance with legislation or (still important but) lower value issues such as bullying and harassment (87%), interview and assessment (82%) and candidate attraction (76%).

Many fewer organisations have linked diversity into talent and career management (34%), performance management (28%) or reward and recognition (21%).

There was also a suggestion that organisations need more diversity champions.  I'm not so sure of this.  My worry is that having these individuals will drive more tactical initiatives.  To really drive diversity and inclusion these need to be integrated into a broader HCM strategy, and the HCM champion take overall accountability for all these areas, as part of driving growth in human capital / organisational capability.

I'll be sharing more on this agenda from the Economist's Diversity Summit 'The Value of Inclusion' - onThursday.

 

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