New: Introducing enterprise-grade roles and permissions controls.&nbsp;<a href="/blog/introducing-enterprise-grade-roles-and-permissions/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Read more.</a>

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We’re proud to announce today that Dandi has received a clean SOC 2 Type 1 attestation report.

Announcing SOC 2 monitoring powered by Drata

We&rsquo;re proud to announce today that Dandi has received a clean SOC 2 Type 1 attestation report.&nbsp;
This rigorous, independent assessment of our internal security controls serves as validation of our dedication and adherence to the highest, enterprise-grade standards for security, confidentiality, and availability.
Dandi uses <a href="https://drata.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drata</a>&rsquo;s automated platform to continuously monitor its internal security controls against the highest possible standards. With Drata, Dandi has real-time visibility across the organization to ensure the end-to-end security and compliance posture of our systems.

Mamdouh AlRamadan

Cofounder & CTO

Conducted by Sensiba LLP, a nationally recognized CPA firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, this attestation report affirms that Dandi&rsquo;s information security practices, policies, procedures, and operations meet the rigorous SOC 2 Trust Service Criteria for security, confidentiality, and availability.
To learn more about our security protocols, visit our&nbsp;<a href="https://trust.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Trust Center</a>.

<h2>More to come</h2>
DEI is an inherently data-driven field, and security is central to its success.&nbsp;
We&rsquo;re hard at work building powerful new privacy and security features, and look forward to sharing more soon.

<h3><a href="https://demo.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow">Book a demo</a> to learn what Dandi can do for your DEI efforts.</h3>

Myths and misconceptions frame much of the conversation today about DEI and people data. In this article, we're sorting fact from fiction.

Busted: Debunking 4 key myths about DEI and people data

There are so many myths about DEI work.&nbsp;
Some believe these efforts do not help the business. Some believe that this work leads to discrimination itself, and many hold the belief that collecting data around DEI introduces a lot of risk.&nbsp;&nbsp;
While none of these myths are rooted entirely in truth, the reality is they continue to frame at least part of the DEI conversation today. It&rsquo;s essential that DEI leaders be able to navigate these conversations successfully.
So, let&rsquo;s debunk some of these myths!

<h2>Myth: Collecting DEI data puts the organization at risk of lawsuits</h2>
<h3>Fact: Collecting data can actually help protect the organization from legal action</h3>
This is a big one!&nbsp;
So much reluctance to engage in DEI analytic efforts is driven by fear. Why? Well, for decades, organizations were held accountable for any discriminatory findings, leading to a mentality that, if you don&rsquo;t know if there are any problems, you can&rsquo;t be responsible for those problems. So organizations didn&rsquo;t look under the hood, in fear of what they might find.&nbsp;&nbsp;
But, there has been a significant mindset shift. Now, we know there are problems, and by ignoring them, we are only perpetuating the issues. Organizations have come to recognize that collecting data can actually help protect the organization from legal action by identifying and mitigating potential risks before they become larger issues.&nbsp;&nbsp;
To be fair, it is still possible for diversity metrics to be used in employment and discrimination disputes, because they can provide concrete evidence of discrimination against a protected group. Still, there are <a href="https://hbr.org/2022/03/data-driven-diversity?registration=success" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">bigger risks</a> in not collecting the data and conducting analysis at all.&nbsp;&nbsp;
One risk is perception: It&rsquo;s possible that employees and the general public will see a company&rsquo;s reluctance to collect employee data as being indicative of a general lack of concern for DEI in the workplace. It&rsquo;s also possible that companies will still be sued for discrimination, and will be completely in the dark as to whether those suits are accurate. Being caught off-guard is not advantageous for anyone, legal counsel especially.&nbsp;
Furthermore, there are now regulations about managing employee data, <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/privacy-best-practices-for-dei-data/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">enforcing privacy statutes</a> and implementing security controls that didn&rsquo;t previously exist. This means that technology is generally configured to be much more protective of data than in prior decades.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<h2>Myth: Employees do not support the collection of employee data</h2>
<h3>Fact: Most employees support data collection&mdash;especially when they understand the benefits</h3>
Employees will never share their most personal details with employers&mdash;right?
While it's certainly true that some employees are uncomfortable with the idea of data collection, studies have shown that <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/02/how-companies-can-use-employee-data-responsibly" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">the majority of employees are actually supportive of data collection efforts when they understand the benefits</a>. In fact, many employees see data collection as a way to improve their work environment and make their jobs easier.&nbsp;&nbsp;
So how can we help employees understand the benefits of data collection?&nbsp;
Perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle is to be transparent about data collection practices. When employees understand why data is being collected and how it will be used, they are more likely to support these efforts and to see them as a positive development. This does not mean that all results must be shared organization-wide. But it does mean that there is intentionality about how the data will be used, and employees are in the loop about it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Employees must also trust that their data will be kept private. <a href="https://builtin.com/people-management/dei-data-privacy" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Threshold reporting</a> is a key mechanism for data confidentiality. I can&rsquo;t count the times employees have insisted that managers can see their very specific engagement survey responses. They are up in arms, upset that their feedback has been disclosed.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Most often, this reaction is due to a lack of understanding regarding system thresholds. Typically, a sample size of 5 or more is required for any manager to get dashboard access, and it is literally impossible to see individual responses. Instead of simply insisting that managers can&rsquo;t see responses, employees must be brought more closely into the process, perhaps even shown a sample dashboard, to see that responses cannot be identified.

<h3>Learn how Dandi&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/introducing-enterprise-grade-roles-and-permissions/" rel="follow">roles and permissions controls</a> help businesses collect, analyze and share people data&mdash;safely and securely</h3>

<h2>Myth: DEI data collection is inherently discriminatory</h2>
<h3>Fact: Collecting employee data is a key driver of equity in the workplace</h3>
The myth that DEI data collection is discriminatory is based on a misunderstanding of the purpose and intent behind collecting this type of data. In fact, collecting DEI data is an essential first step in identifying disparities and systemic issues that may exist in an organization.&nbsp;<a href="https://fortune.com/2022/06/20/data-first-diversity-equity-inclusion-careers-black-workers-gender-race-bias-dei-roland-fryer/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">This data can help </a>identify where resources and attention are needed to improve equity and inclusion for all employees.
In fact, DEI data collection can help promote a more equitable workplace culture by identifying where disparities exist and how to address them. However, the collection of this data is still typically voluntary, and employees can choose whether or not to disclose their identity information.
One particular example where individuals are reluctant to disclose their identity is in the candidate experience. Individuals&mdash;particularly those belonging to historically marginalized groups&mdash;are often hesitant to disclose their identities for fear of discrimination. They want to be given an equitable chance at gaining employment in the organization.
In turn, many applicant tracking systems (ATS) actually restrict recruiter access to these data points. A recruiter, then, is not exposed to how an applicant identifies, removing (some of) the risk for bias in the process. Instead, candidate identities are used for aggregate analysis to ensure processes are equitable overall, not on an individual level.&nbsp;

<h2>Myth: DEI data collection is a one-time effort</h2>
<h3>Fact: Companies need to take an always-on approach to data collection</h3>
Data represents a moment in time. It shows how your company looked at the moment the data was captured. And since a company&rsquo;s workforce is constantly changing and evolving, it&rsquo;s necessary to keep collecting new data that reflects these changes.
For instance, pay equity has historically been an annual analysis. Once a year, we pull the compensation data on existing employees, compare job families, geographics, and levels by gender and race, and then move on with our lives. But that&rsquo;s not enough.&nbsp;&nbsp;
When just one highly paid employee leaves the organization, pay equity shifts. When just one underpaid employee joins the organization, pay equity shifts. Each and every person counts. And you shouldn&rsquo;t wait until next year&rsquo;s annual review to see a compensation adjustment to right a pay inequity wrong.

DEI data collection should be viewed as a starting point, rather than a one-time event. As an organization evolves and grows, so too will its workforce and the challenges it faces in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. For this reason, regular data collection and analysis is necessary to track progress, identify trends, and adjust strategies as needed.
In reality, collecting DEI data is an ongoing process that requires continuous analysis and progress tracking to measure the effectiveness of DEI initiatives over time. Regular data collection allows organizations to stay on top of these changes and make adjustments as needed to ensure they are still effectively promoting diversity and inclusion.

<h3>Fact: Forward-looking companies trust Dandi with their people data. Ready to join them? <a href="https://demo.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow">Book a demo</a> to learn more.</h3>

Over 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the US since the start of the year. This Pride Month, Dandi is speaking with leaders across the DEI space to learn what Pride means to them, and how organizations can support LGBTQ+ employees at a time of increased political attack.

Pride @ Work: Jennifer Brown, CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting

Words like &ldquo;legend&rdquo; are thrown around a lot these days. But if there&rsquo;s anyone that qualifies for such lofty labels, it&rsquo;s <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Jennifer Brown</a>.

As CEO and Founder of <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.jenniferbrownconsulting.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Jennifer Brown Consulting</a> (JBC), Jennifer has left an indelible mark on the DEI space. Through JBC, she and her team have designed and executed inclusion strategies and trainings for some of the biggest companies and nonprofits in the world.

Jennifer is the author of four books on inclusive leadership, including her most recent, &ldquo;How to Be an Inclusive Leader,&rdquo; which is currently in its second printing. Her podcast, &ldquo;The Will to Change,&rdquo; is one of the top DEI podcasts today.

Here&rsquo;s what she had to say about Pride.

1. What does Pride Month mean for you?

Even though I&rsquo;ve been out now for over 30 years, Pride month is still an emotional one for me. I am not only reminded of my own journey &ndash; from the fear and excitement of coming out to discovering this whole new community that would support, inspire, and teach me &ndash; but I feel an enormous pride to be certified as an LGBTQ+-owned business for nearly 20 years, and to have the opportunity to teach inclusion from stages around the world, speaking and writing from my own lived experience, and sharing my vision of a workplace &ndash; and a world &ndash; where all of us can thrive.

More than this though, it&rsquo;s a time for me to remember how many around me every day, and around the world, are still facing their fears and grappling with safety, disclosure, discrimination, and persecution. Given the record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills making their way through the country, this sacred time always re-ignites my energy and focus on the work ahead, and reminds me of my relatively more comfortable circumstances. From this place, I recommit to give back, and give more.&nbsp;

This is why the celebrations of this month are so important; for a community who&rsquo;s experienced such invisibility and stigma, to be prioritized, and to be the focus of so much positive education, empathy, and celebration, matters more than ever. We must mark each step in our progress, too. 

What makes me happiest during Pride Month is to see how many companies are taking strides to publicly support the community, in some cases at greater risk than ever before given the political climate. Although I know this kind of corporate support can be performative, or non-existent, I still see legions of long-time&nbsp;and new supporters, with each passing year, standing up for us. I often get to play a part in helping organizations awaken and mobilize in this way, which is deeply fulfilling work.

2. In many places across the country, the rights of LGBTQ+ folks are under renewed attack. What are some ways that employers can show up for their employees at this particular moment?

It&rsquo;s more critical than ever that institutions go beyond &ldquo;business as usual,&rdquo; and utilize their might to push for equality more broadly than their &ldquo;four walls.&rdquo; The most recent <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Edelman Trust Barometer</a> found that business is still the most trusted, over government, and with this comes the responsibility to stand up for and protect marginalized people&mdash;whether they be the employees within those organizations experiencing workplace bias, or customers and stakeholders experiencing societal bias. This all impacts companies&rsquo; ability to succeed and grow&mdash;environments of belonging are critical to creativity, innovation and customer relationships. Younger generations of talent and customers are also raising their voice and demanding that more be done, and companies ignore this at their peril.&nbsp;

Employers should not just wait for Pride month but communicate 365 days a year that LGBTQ+ people are an important priority, that they&rsquo;re not where they should be on a variety of metrics, and how they&rsquo;re holding themselves accountable for progress. 

Studies show that <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/adv/article-making-it-easier-for-lgbtq-workers-to-come-out/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">nearly 50% of LGBTQ+ employees are still closeted in the workplace</a>, which harms not just the individual but the institution. Closing gaps in representation, belonging, and promotion and advancement should be a focus. The work is never complete, but progress matters, and transparency is key&mdash;acknowledging challenges openly and tackling them systematically goes a long way. The active support and sponsorship of affinity groups, LGBTQ+ 101 and allyship education, and community engagement are all areas of focus that can accelerate this journey.&nbsp;

Companies also increasingly need to be on the front lines of the difficult but necessary culture debates, as their employees and constituents are directly impacted by these and there is considerable reputational risk to remaining silent. Many savvy organizations are trying to walk the walk of their values, jumping in and leveraging their might, while others are sitting on the sidelines&mdash;which may feel like safety, but can have an equally negative effect on morale and company culture.&nbsp;

3. How are you celebrating Pride this year?

I usually have a very busy speaking schedule during Pride, and enjoy every moment of it because I get to connect with audiences and companies at a unique time of celebration, community, and shared humanity. 

At this time of year, I also make a point to thank the allies in my life. Allyship has shifted opportunities for all of us and provides such invaluable air cover for many vulnerable people as they make their way to the destination of authenticity. Lastly, I check in on my allyship; how am I standing up alongside those in my community who deserve more of a voice?&nbsp;

4. What's a favorite Pride celebration you&rsquo;ve been part of?

Although they get longer every year, the New York City Pride Parade defies description&mdash;in its scope, energy, music, diversity&mdash;like all things NYC, it&rsquo;s larger than life, and still takes my breath away. I love running into friends, seeing my clients marching, and witnessing all the new and growing organizations marching every year&mdash;communities that I never knew anything about, registering their values in public and showing up publicly. Such a powerful reminder that LGBTQ+ people are everywhere, in every facet of life, and in every variety of humanness. It&rsquo;s beautiful to behold, and be a part of.&nbsp;

5. What's one tip you have for other orgs that might want to celebrate Pride, but don't know where to start?

The Disability community has a saying: &ldquo;Nothing about us, without us.&rdquo;&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s so critical to find internal champions to consult with for Pride, and they do exist; every org has either LGBTQ+ people in it, or if no one is out, at least allies who can inform the work and help lead the charge. If an LGBTQ+ affinity group exists, they can effectively develop and steer a Pride strategy. External partners or community orgs can assist as well. Either way, going to the community for this is the ideal scenario because they know the landscape best and can guide the company on what will resonate.&nbsp;

Failing this, orgs can pull together a working DEI group of folks passionate about equality to look at what can be a small effort to mark the month&mdash;at least to start. Possible activities could include a message of support and celebration from leadership, gatherings and events, a speaker or panel, or a small philanthropic donation to a community organization in their ecosystem.

Other cultural heritage months may be already celebrated by a company, and those models can be leveraged for Pride month as well.

Engineered to meet the highest enterprise-grade privacy standards, our new roles and permissions controls give businesses granular access control over every part of Dandi.

Introducing enterprise-grade roles and permissions controls

People data can reveal powerful DEI insights. But many businesses today are limited in their ability to analyze people data because their existing softwares cannot adequately protect the information.&nbsp;

Our new roles and permissions controls are designed to solve a core security challenge around people data&mdash;access&mdash;so businesses can learn more and do more for employees.

Engineered to provide granular levels of access control to every part of our product, roles and permissions allow businesses to precisely manage who can view and analyze people data, across their organizations.

<h2 style="margin-top: 18pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Powerful levels of control</h2>
Dandi now allows the centralized creation and management of user roles in Dandi. Each role can be assigned permissions around key product features, metrics, and data fields. 

Since different people throughout a company have different needs to view and analyze people data, the configurations available through Dandi can be highly specific.

As an example, let&rsquo;s imagine a 5,000-person company with offices in the United States, LATAM, and EMEA. With Dandi roles and permissions enabled, every full-time employee of the company could have access to a DEI overview dashboard that contains multiple reports. However, the reports and information visible in that dashboard would automatically change based on an employee's role assignment:&nbsp;

<ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;">
<li style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
Regional DEI leads would have permission to view reports and run analyses for their particular region
</li>
<li style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
Global C-suite leaders would have access to reports at the corporate level
</li>
<li style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
Operations analysts dedicated exclusively to DEI would have full access to all reports and all analyses, as they need this level of permission in order to do their jobs
</li>
<li style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
Talent leads for the engineering department would have permission to only view recruiting and hiring reports for their department
</li>
</ul>
In this way, roles and permissions allows everyone at the company to have a view of DEI, while ensuring that no one sees data they shouldn't.

<h2 style="margin-top: 18pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Seamless role management</h2>
As part of this update, we&rsquo;re also adding integrations with four popular identity providers:
<ul>
<li>Okta</li>
<li>OneLogin</li>
<li>Google</li>
<li>Microsoft Azure</li>
</ul>
By connecting to your identity provider, Dandi will automatically sync all your users and groups.

Once Dandi pulls in your groups, you can then assign Dandi roles to those groups as a whole. Dandi role assignments will automatically update as users are added or change groups within your identity provider.

<h2 style="margin-top: 18pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Why roles and permissions matters</h2>
Data-driven DEI cannot move forward without appropriate security measures. 

Today, people data often lives in spreadsheets and business intelligence tools, or general purpose people analytics platforms. None of these options offer robust roles and permissions controls, which means that&mdash;in order to protect the data&mdash;access is often limited to a select number of people. 

In order for data to make an impact, it needs to be shared. But that doesn&rsquo;t mean organizations should assume needless risk or violate employee trust. 

We built our roles and permissions to address this balance between visibility and privacy. We want to ensure that the right data is seen by the right people&mdash;and no one else.

<h2 style="margin-top: 18pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Going forward</h2>
No two companies will have the exact same setup for their roles and permissions.&nbsp;

Current customers are working with our CS team to set up the appropriate roles and permissions for their organizations. Going forward, roles and permissions setup will be a central aspect of our onboarding process.

Roles and permissions is included across all Dandi pricing plans. View the <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://itsdandi.com/pricing" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Pricing page </a>to learn more.

<h2>More to come</h2>
From <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/announcing-soc-2-monitoring-powered-by-drata/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">our recent SOC 2 attestation</a> to today's announcement, Dandi is committed to being the leader in people data privacy and security. 

We&rsquo;re hard at work building more features in this important area, and look forward to sharing more soon.

<h3>Want to see roles and permissions in action? <a href="https://demo.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Book a demo</a>.</h3>

This Pride Month, Dandi is speaking with leaders across the DEI space to learn what Pride means to them, and how organizations can support LGBTQ+ employees at a time of increased political attack.

Pride @ Work: Dave Ciliberto, DEI leader and educator

As a DEI leader with over 25 years of executive experience, Dave Ciliberto advises Fortune 500 businesses, nonprofits, higher education institutions, and government sector clientele on a range of issues, including inclusion, engagement and equity; organizational development; and anti-harassment training.
He&rsquo;s also an adjunct instructor at Cornell University ILR, where he leads several courses on DEI, including Emerging Trends, DEI Councils, Education &amp; Training, and ERGs.
Here&rsquo;s what Dave has to say about Pride.

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">What does Pride Month mean for you?</h3>

Pride Month is a chance to remind ourselves and others that we are here and we have overcome so many obstacles to be out and proud of who we are and that we matter. We are a diverse community that continues to need each other and our allies to fight the fight for equity.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">In many places across the country, the rights of LGBTQ+ folks are under renewed attack. What are some ways that employers can show up for their employees at this particular moment?</h3>

There are over 417 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures across the US since the start of the year (according to the American Civil Liberties Union data as of April 3rd, 2023). It&rsquo;s getting worse each year. HELP us fight back!&nbsp;

At a minimum ensure that your workplace is safe for us. Educate around biases, inappropriate behaviors, bullying. Seek feedback from out LGBTQ+ employees, ask if the organizational culture is safe, what is working well, what needs attention for a safe and secure workplace culture.

We do need the help of our allies at work and elsewhere to push back on the anti-LGBTQ legislation and politicians who create that legislation. We are under attack by many politicians and some of their followers for just existing as ourselves, not pretending to be someone else, just as human beings in the human race that we are part of.&nbsp;

The best support is not supporting the anti-LGBTQ legislation and going against the politicians who do support it. Be verbal about the discrimination that LGBTQ+ folks will face, write to your representatives, call your representatives, express your frustration, anger, disgust&mdash;whatever you are feeling about the inequity of how we (LGBTQ+) are being unfairly treated. All we want is what straight people have, but we do not.&nbsp;

I know a lot of straight allies and I THANK them all. For those who aren&rsquo;t I typically ask&mdash;When did you decide to be straight? &ldquo;I am just straight,&rdquo; they say. Well I didn&rsquo;t decide to be gay&mdash;I just am&mdash;and I am proud of who I am and know my life is harder. I can&rsquo;t freely kiss or embrace my husband without fear of verbal or physical attacks depending upon where I am in the country and world. Try to live like that yourself.

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">How are you celebrating Pride this year?</h3>

This year I won&rsquo;t be marching in the Pride parade as I have done before (okay many years ago when I was younger lol) though I will be a speaker during Pride month at several organizations and I will be on many LGBTQ+ panels this June.&nbsp;

Personally I will celebrate with my husband and close friends while we are at the Pines in Fire Island (this is a predominantly LGBTQ+ community and majority and we do welcome our straight family and friends but it is nice to be the majority) enjoying our community and the beach.&nbsp;

We celebrate in the Pines now since even in parts of NYC it isn&rsquo;t safe for us (LGBTQ+) especially since I was recently called the f-word in my own neighborhood where I used to feel safe. That is a story for another time.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">What's a favorite Pride celebration you&rsquo;ve been part of?</h3>

Being on LGBTQ+ panels is my favorite Pride celebration and I am thrilled I get to share my lived experiences with audiences who are interested in hearing and learning about them. I am honored to be part of any organization who wants to celebrate us and create a safe workplace culture for us.&nbsp;

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">What's one tip you have for other orgs that might want to celebrate Pride, but don't know where to start?</h3>

The first place to start is if you have an ERG (Employee Resource Group) for LGBTQ+ employees to see what is important to the members. If you don&rsquo;t have a LGBTQ+ ERG then I&rsquo;d start with a Pride panel (I know you see a pattern here&mdash;panels are my favorite).&nbsp;

If this is new I would suggest bringing in a guest speaker to set the stage about psychological safety, storytelling and sharing about successes and challenges one has faced based upon one&rsquo;s identity. Next, if an organization wants to do more to connect people, and you have skilled facilitators, you can organize small roundtable discussion to have others share their lived experiences.&nbsp;

Over 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the US since the start of the year. This Pride Month, Dandi is speaking with leaders across the DEI space about what Pride means to them, and how organizations can support LGBTQ+ employees at a time of increased political attack.

Pride @ Work: Larry Womack, Manager, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, HubSpot

Over a career spanning more than a dozen years, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/larrywomack/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Larry Womack</a> has led DEI programs and initiatives at startups, non-profits, and consultancies.

Today, Larry is a manager on the Diversity, Inclusion &amp; Belonging team at <a href="https://www.hubspot.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">HubSpot</a>, where he oversees community programs and employee resource groups (ERG&rsquo;s) across HubSpot&rsquo;s global offices.

From leading DIY Pride celebrations at previous jobs, to coordinating global celebrations like this year&rsquo;s festivities at HubSpot (more on that below), Pride has always been an important aspect of Larry&rsquo;s life and work.

Here&rsquo;s what he has to say about Pride this year.

<h3>What does Pride Month mean for you?&nbsp;</h3>
Unapologetic Authenticity and Joy. 
Pride was the first time I had been around so many queer people of all backgrounds and I have never felt so much joy exude from my body. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to have gone to numerous Pride celebrations around the world and it honestly is just such a fantastic experience. Every single person can be themselves unapologetically. I try to live that way day to day but Pride month it&rsquo;s on overdrive.&nbsp;

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">In many places across the country, the rights of LGBTQ+ folks are under renewed attack. What are some ways that employers can show up for their employees at this particular moment?&nbsp;</h3>

Lead from the top and the front. Executives should be amplifying these voices and using their power to influence in these areas.&nbsp;

Center the people who are most marginalized. That would be trans and non-binary people and more explicitly trans and non-binary people of color. It&rsquo;s important that we show up and support them, elevate their experiences, ensure that our leaders are trained on how to support gender diverse employees, and educate all employees on what gender identity is and its impact.&nbsp;

This will allow folks to have more empathy and understanding for our trans and non-binary siblings and not just avoid the topic because of fear that they might get something wrong.&nbsp;

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">How are you celebrating Pride this year at HubSpot?&nbsp;</h3>

So much!!!! We have a variety of in-person and virtual events across the month. Our theme is Queer Joy and one big event&mdash;because everyone in the company, across the globe can get involved&mdash;is <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.hubspot.com/pride" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Growing With Pride</a> where employees complete challenges daily online and each point goes towards charitable donations for regional LGBTQ+ charities globally. &nbsp;

Challenges include things like taking a moment for yourself during the day to breathe to sharing content from queer creators to our Pride 5k where HubSpotters run, walk, or sashay (anything they&rsquo;re able to do) and take a picture and share it within our LGBTQ+ Community.&nbsp;

People get so involved and it's really cool to see people participating across the globe. It&rsquo;s almost like our own little Pride Parade over the last couple of weeks of June!

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">What's a favorite Pride celebration you&rsquo;ve been part of?</h3>

This is the hardest question to answer. Honestly, I think any time I go to city&rsquo;s Pride that I haven't been to. I try at least once a year to go to a Pride that I haven't been to before, big or small. It's really cool to see people from around the world celebrating in a similar fashion and just shows how grand and expansive our community is.&nbsp;

<h3 style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;">What's one tip you have for other orgs that might want to celebrate Pride, but don't know where to start?</h3>

Get feedback from your LGBTQ+ employees, first and foremost. Not everyone needs something flashy. A lot of companies will sponsor a Pride parade or partner with a charity to get their names out there but is that what the community wants?&nbsp;

Then start small. Have someone in your leadership team talk about why Pride is important to them as an ally. Have your leaders be visible. I think meaningful programming is more important than what you can post on social media. Think about the stories that are most important and find a way to tell those either by bringing a speaker in or giving employees the opportunity to attend something externally.

DEI Journeys is an ongoing series highlighting the diverse career paths of leaders across the DEI space. Today, we're featuring the one-of-a-kind journey of Dwight Phyall.

DEI Journeys: Total Wine & More’s Dwight Phyall is (probably) the world’s only sommelier DEI leader

How does one find themselves leading DEI for a 10,000-person wine and beverage retailer?

According to <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwight-a-phyall-pmp/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Dwight Phyall</a>, being a certified sommelier definitely wasn&rsquo;t on the job spec when he applied for the role of Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Total Wine &amp; More. But it didn&rsquo;t hurt, either.

&ldquo;The wine thing&mdash;,&rdquo; he chuckles. &ldquo;I actually got into it because I wanted to drink something a bit more quote, unquote sophisticated, so I went to the liquor store and picked the bottle with the prettiest label. I really wanted to be better than that, so I started learning everything I could by volunteering at a shop after work, and training for my certification.&rdquo;

But knowing his way around a wine list is just one of the career milestones he&rsquo;s accomplished on the path to becoming a DEI leader at the $5.5 billion revenue drinks company.&nbsp;

Dwight had been serving underrepresented people, in one way or another, for most of his adult life before he got his first stint in DEI. Recruited straight out of college as a scout for the Philadelphia Eagles, Dwight quit the mud and melee of the sports field to take a year out to volunteer with AmeriCorps.

Unexpectedly, sports led him back to his true calling.

&ldquo;I was running this after-school program for fourth and fifth graders,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;There was this nonverbal student&mdash;she was one of maybe 15 kids in the class. At that time, we were focusing on sports, and we were playing basketball. I line the kids up to do free throws, and Maya&mdash;the nonverbal student&mdash;gets in the back of the line as she always does.

&ldquo;The first student in line hits the rim. The second makes the shot. We keep going through the line until we get to Maya. Everyone around her is kind of snickering. She gets the ball in her hands and crouches down right up close to the basket. She makes the shot. All the kids cheer.

&ldquo;And she comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder saying, &lsquo;Coach D, I made it.&rsquo; It was the first time I&rsquo;d ever heard her talk. It made me realize that if you put people in a position to be successful, there&rsquo;s no limit to where they can go.&rdquo;

<h2 style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; padding-bottom: 6pt;">Dwight&rsquo;s biggest learning stepping into a DEI leadership role: Managing strategy at scale</h2>
Life after AmeriCorps took Dwight to the Department of Labor, where he worked on creating technical work programs for low-income 16 to 24-year-olds as part of the National Office of Job Corps. The experience taught him a lot, he says, about seeing people succeed despite the odds.

&ldquo;I saw folks going from having almost nothing to getting a sufficient income that could sustain their needs,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Seeing that progression from where they started to coming back and mentoring other students was incredibly powerful.&rdquo;

But joining health provider Oscar Health as the Program Lead of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging in 2020 during the aftermath of George Floyd shifted his internal drive from serving the underrepresented to pushing for more equitable outcomes.

It was a time when global social media had become an endless midnight of blacked out tiles. Corporate entities were wrestling with how to show support without looking performative. And Dwight knew that any DEI efforts he put his hand to needed to be both intentional and substantive.

&ldquo;What we were doing at Oscar Health felt measurable, tactful, and real&mdash;it connected back to the business,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We wanted to make sure that we had a connection to each one of our patients, our clients, and all the doctors, and that they felt comfortable being in a space with someone who knew what they were going through from a cultural standpoint. We wanted to put our money where our mouths were.&rdquo;

Moving from the 1,000-person team at Oscar Health to a 10,000-strong retail organization like Total Wine &amp; More came with new DEI challenges. And where there&rsquo;s a big footprint, there are big shoes to fill.

&ldquo;We have entirely separate cultures across our different stores, between different regions, and between the corporate and retail sides of the business,&rdquo; Dwight explains. &ldquo;Our folks on the sales floor only have time to absorb a fraction of the DEI initiatives and content we share compared to how we engage with it at the corporate office. Like any other retail organization, we have to be very intentional in setting a DEI strategy that makes sense for the whole, not just what we think works from afar.&rdquo;

Creating a strategy that works for the whole, Dwight says, involves finding out what the whole wants and needs to feel belonging at work.

&ldquo;When scaling DEI in a big retail organization, you can&rsquo;t take actions from the corporate office based on your own subjective assessment. You need to hear from the people on the sales floor. You need to understand how folks have reacted to past actions, what has been meaningful to them, and what will be successful for the largest number of people.

&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t know how people feel about coming to work each day, then you can&rsquo;t make changes that feel meaningful to them.&rdquo;

<h2 style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; padding-bottom: 6pt;">Dwight&rsquo;s biggest success scaling DEI: Understanding the wider impact of individual stories</h2>
In a 10,000-person organization, it&rsquo;s easy to lose sight of people. But when that organization operates over 250 stores across the country, each with their own unique needs and cultures, it dials up the difficulty just a notch.

Dwight knew that to make the biggest impact in DEI at Total Wine, he needed to understand its people. To do that, he needed to find out what they were thinking.

&ldquo;One of the battles you have to face in this space is being performative&mdash;or being construed as such,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;If you show support, march in a parade, or hang a banner&hellip; You have to strike that balance between taking intentional action and pushing people to be more educated and aware.

&ldquo;In retail, you need to visit the stores and listen to people to make a real difference on DEI,&rdquo; Dwight adds. &ldquo;One of the most important things I&rsquo;ve learned was that folks sometimes don&rsquo;t feel seen. The smallest of shifts can do so much to help that.&rdquo;

Listening to people is how Dwight found out that one person from Total Wine&rsquo;s retail team wasn&rsquo;t feeling included.

&ldquo;It was our name tags for the sales floor team,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re just a name&mdash;they don&rsquo;t tell a story about who that person is or how they identify. But when one of the sales floor team members wrote in to tell us they were being misgendered, it was our chance to listen.&rdquo;

From a logistics perspective, changing store name tags was a small thing. But it ended up having a huge impact. Because it didn&rsquo;t just mean that the one employee in Washington State felt more seen, or that they could come to work as themselves. It also meant that countless others, who were thinking and feeling the same, did too. To Dwight, that was the whole point of building a strategy that works for the whole.&nbsp;

&ldquo;We wanted to make sure that all of our team members feel supported in being identified the way they want to be identified,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;We changed our name tags so that employees now have the option to identify themselves with their pronouns if they want to. It was a huge success among our wider team. That&rsquo;s all that counts.&rdquo;

<h2 style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; padding-bottom: 6pt;">Dwight&rsquo;s one action that made the most impact: Applying project management principles to DEI</h2>
For the entirety of his career, Dwight&rsquo;s experience has kept coming back to project and program management. It&rsquo;s just what he knows how to do, he says, but the experience has been instrumental in how he&rsquo;s approached each of his DEI roles so far.

&ldquo;Our world and our society is progressively more fluid than ever before,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Operating in it requires one to be more open-minded, nimble, and agile so I can&nbsp;navigate, educate, and advocate.

&ldquo;My experience in program and project management has allowed me to have a more keen understanding and awareness of prioritizing, and implementing the right procedures, processes, and resources in place to get a job done. It helps me maintain a mindset of continuous improvement and iteration.&rdquo;

As DEI continues to evolve, Dwight has found himself drawing on his project management experience to stay responsive to new challenges, and make sure his DEI strategy continues to stay in step with both Total Wine&rsquo;s strategic and workforce needs.

His philosophy boils down to a few key tenets:

<ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;">
<li style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
Sometimes less is more. &ldquo;Never underestimate the importance and impact of making subtle changes,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Crawl before you can walk. Don&rsquo;t try to boil the ocean. All the clich&eacute;s ring true here.&rdquo; Instead of making big gestures, Dwight&rsquo;s strategy is based on <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/to-close-the-pay-gap-think-small/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">smaller actions that contribute to measurable progress</a> coupled with continuous testing and measurement.
</li>
<li style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
Leverage relationships for continuous feedback. &ldquo;Getting the feedback from our customers and our employees alike is a huge privilege, and there are so many DEI flagship projects that we have put in place that we know will be long-lasting,&rdquo; Dwight says. Dwight gathers input from employees and customers to improve how DEI contributes to the business. Consumer surveys tell him what customers care about, while cross-functional teams on key campaigns create internal DEI feedback loops.
</li>
<li style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
Continuously evaluate gaps and opportunities. Increasing capacity for progress means staying responsive to challenges old and new. Dwight continuously draws on DEI data and analytics that inform an ever-evolving approach to DEI, talent, and culture across the organization. Quarterly reporting among teams creates trickle-down data stewardship, while employee feedback identifies gaps and opportunities in the employee experience.&nbsp;
</li>
</ul>

Dwight&rsquo;s growth mindset on DEI doesn&rsquo;t just apply to his career&mdash;it&rsquo;s fundamental to who he is as a person. He&rsquo;s always asking questions as to who he is, and what he stands for in this space.

&ldquo;Being the first person to kind of build this function up [at Total Wine] has been so meaningful,&rdquo; Dwight notes. &ldquo;To be able to set the strategy, to identify the gaps and opportunities that we have as a company, but also highlight some of the strengths that we have and the people that help to serve and make our company what it is&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m here for.

&ldquo;But I still ask myself daily: Am I qualified enough? Do I have a voice? Do I have buy-in from the people that have the biggest level of influence? Do I have the energy to sustain what this is and what it could be? 

&ldquo;Then I think: DEI isn&rsquo;t about me&mdash;it&rsquo;s about everyone else. This work is iterative. Our society is fluid, so the work has to be. If you&rsquo;re not constantly on your toes, you&rsquo;re in the wrong profession.&rdquo;

Learn what attrition and retention reveal about your business, and how you can use Dandi to derive better insights around these two crucial metrics.

Using data to better understand attrition and retention

In DEI, we tend to think of attrition and retention as two sides of the same coin. Employees stay or go. We retain them, or they churn. And we often use the terms interchangeably to describe the same thing: the overall health and stability of your workforce.
But in reality, they&rsquo;re more like a balancing act. Organizations want to reduce attrition, but increase retention. Attrition costs money, while retention saves it. But attrition and retention are only really inversely proportional in terms of their outcome on your workforce.
Understanding what makes people quit organizations isn&rsquo;t the same as understanding what makes others stay. People might stay because of your culture, even if they&rsquo;re not getting the right opportunities to progress. By the same token, others might get the right opportunities, but leave because your culture doesn&rsquo;t make them feel welcome. Both can be (and often are) true for different employee populations at the same time.

Measuring who stays or goes only gives you a one-sided story of what&rsquo;s happening in your workforce. But measuring and tracking&nbsp;both gives you a full picture of the nuance behind differences in employee experience at your organization.

<h2>Attrition identifies your biggest DEI gaps and opportunities</h2>
Your organization&rsquo;s attrition rate is the rate at which people leave your company. Unchecked, it costs organizations <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/attrition-is-your-business-case-for-dei/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">millions of dollars each year</a>, because it&rsquo;s never just about an employee sending their letter of resignation. Instead, it quantifies the knock-on impact quitting has on their productivity, performance, and that of their team, too.&nbsp;

There are a variety of reasons why people leave organizations:
<ul>
<li>
Lack of opportunities for growth and professional development
</li>
<li>
Poor job satisfaction
</li>
<li>
Lack of belonging
</li>
<li>
Toxic or negative culture
</li>
<li>
Poor leadership, or perception of leadership
</li>
</ul>
But specifically in the context of DEI, attrition is your organization&rsquo;s &ldquo;check engine&rdquo; light that signals inclusion isn&rsquo;t working. Why? Because research shows time and time again that folks from underrepresented groups are disproportionately more likely to experience discrimination and bias at every step of the recruitment process and employee lifecycle. That makes them more likely to leave.

<h3>How to measure attrition in the context of DEI</h3>
When attrition increases at your organization, it&rsquo;s a sign that some people are experiencing a difference in their employee experience. Setting a benchmark for attrition, and tracking it in real time can help you pinpoint when this experience happens, and how different events or circumstances impact your employees&rsquo; likelihood of leaving.
Segmenting your workforce attrition rate by different departments or employee populations, including dimensions of diversity, can get you some way to identifying where attrition is happening.
But without intersectional measurement, you can&rsquo;t uncover the full story behind what&rsquo;s driving attrition in the first place, meaning it&rsquo;s much harder to identify its root causes.
For example, knowing your office locations in India are experiencing higher attrition than others is helpful, but doesn&rsquo;t give you enough information to fix the problem. But knowing junior women engineers are 3X more likely to quit in this location gives you much more insight into the gaps in your employee experience, and what you can do to fix it.&nbsp;
When measured through an intersectional lens, attrition can be your cue that your employees need more than what they&rsquo;re getting from you. Measured in real time, you can identify the warning signs before they turn into turnover, preventing you from losing money and your best people.&nbsp;

Measure attrition more effectively by:
<ul>
<li>
Segmenting data across multiple variables. Use <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/4-ways-to-use-intersectional-measurement/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">intersectional measurement</a> to see how identities overlap in your attrition data. Focus on dimensions of diversity, including race, ethnicity, age, and gender, and drill down by other employee lifecycle factors, such as role, seniority, office location, department, and tenure.
</li>
<li>
Disaggregating employee data where possible. As <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolawatson/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Carol Watson</a>, Chief Inclusion Officer at global communications agency BCW Global, put it in <a href="https://5keyshifts.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">our recent ebook</a>: &ldquo;Recognizing the different cultural and lived experiences of different groups adds information to focus systemic and behavioral change.&rdquo; Where population sizes allow, disaggregate employee data out of identity groupings (like women, or AAPI employees, for example) to identify why different groups leave.
</li>
<li>
Pulling in qualitative data. Quantitative data shows you empirical proof when people are leaving. But qualitative data on your attrition, including employee engagement surveys, leaver questionnaires, and exit interviews, helps highlight individual employee experiences of your organization that can shed light on the story your data is telling.
</li>
</ul>

<h2>Retention tells you what you&rsquo;re doing right&mdash;and how to scale your efforts</h2>
Retention is the rate at which people stay at your organization. But it&rsquo;s not an exact equation. When people leave an organization, they take their knowledge and skills with them. But the longer people stay, the more value they contribute.
A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053482216300328" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2016 meta analysis</a> found that high turnover has a negative impact on organizational performance. Meanwhile, according to a <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JKM-09-2017-0391/full/html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2020 study</a>, employee retention strengthens organizations&rsquo; ability to share knowledge and innovate.
Retention extends the long-term value of all your people efforts across the entire employee lifecycle, including growth, knowledge sharing and development, work engagement, and performance. But it isn&rsquo;t just good for business outcomes, it&rsquo;s also good for DEI.
Knowing who you&rsquo;re retaining and why points you to the actions you can take across your organization to reduce your attrition elsewhere. It creates a more connected effort beyond just knowing that some departments are more likely to retain their people than others.

<h3>How to measure retention in the context of DEI</h3>
To measure retention over time, you need to get a feel for what &ldquo;good&rdquo; looks like at your organization. Some departments&mdash;for example, shop floor employees in retail organizations&mdash;are more likely to see higher attrition than others. Benchmarking your &ldquo;normal&rdquo; across the organization will help you to identify when patterns change.
Identify the departments, teams, and managers that have the highest retention rates. View and segment this data through an intersectional lens, to see how well they retain different employee populations. And then, use this data to understand what they&rsquo;re doing differently, and build a case for change across the wider organization.

Measure retention more effectively by:
<ul>
<li>
Identifying which employee populations are most likely to stay. Much like attrition, understanding your retention is a who, where, and why problem. Drilling down into your data by department, business unit, location, or even hiring manager helps you understand the differences in experience for different populations. If you&rsquo;re more likely to retain Black women employees than Latinx ones, for example, it gives you a direction of travel to identify what&rsquo;s working as much as what isn&rsquo;t.
</li>
<li>
Integrating DEI data with employee lifecycle data. To understand what makes people stay, you need to identify which processes are positively impacting the employee experience for different employee populations. Connecting DE&amp;I data with performance management, employee engagement, and compensation will help you see where and how different business units and processes are adding to inclusion and scale them.&nbsp;
</li>
</ul>

<h2>Take a data-driven approach to attrition and retention</h2>
When it comes to attrition and retention, there&rsquo;s an old sports analogy that sums it up: The best defense is a good offense.&nbsp;
Attrition and retention present two different stories on the state of your employee experience. Measuring and tracking both of these key metrics not only helps you prevent costly turnover in the near-term, but also&mdash;more importantly&mdash;helps you scale inclusion and belonging over the long term.
Ultimately, data is the key to getting both retention and attrition in balance. Regular, consistent, and intersectional analytics are critical to understanding the health of your workforce, and knowing which aspects of your culture and processes should be prioritized.&nbsp;
Dandi&rsquo;s DEI intersectional approach to&nbsp; attrition analytics helps organizations pinpoint the causes of employee turnover, and identifies at-risk populations before they quit. Segment data by dimensions of diversity, business unit, tenure, location, and more to see quantitative data on the stability of your workforce in real time.

<h3><a href="https://demo.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Book a demo with one of our team members to find out more</a>.</h3>

To succeed in DEI, organizations need to set data-driven near-, mid- and long-term goals that are clear, actionable, and specific. This article explains 5 key areas of focus.

Getting realistic about DEI goals: 5 best practice actions

Elon Musk achieved instant infamy when he finally stepped up to lead Twitter last year. Just months after stepping into the role as the social media platform&rsquo;s CEO, he fired over 50% of its workforce, including 93% of the DEI team.
His move was just one of the latest in a rising tide of DEI layoffs, with Amazon, Nike, Walmart, and Meta all making similar bets. And while most companies have kept quiet on the reason for cutting a vital business function, we think goals had a lot to do with the decision.
According to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/1-24-2023-gartner-hr-survey-identifies-top-five-challenges-facing-dei-leaders" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2023 data from Gartner</a>, 51% of DEI leaders say their biggest challenge is getting business leaders to take ownership. A <a href="https://ss-usa.s3.amazonaws.com/c/308463326/media/27436024f0b84dfd274918375735238/202102%20-%20DEI%20Report.pdf" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2021 report</a> found that 76% of organizations don&rsquo;t set any goals when it comes to DEI. Another <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-salarycom-survey-reveals-companies-are-struggling-to-act-on-their-good-intentions-to-bring-diversity-equity--inclusion-to-their-organizations-301304680.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">2021 report</a> by compensation platform Salary.com, found that when organizations did set goals, less than 2% of them could say they&rsquo;re achieving them with any confidence.&nbsp;
In the wake of the layoffs, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasserer insisted that the global company&rsquo;s DEI priorities &ldquo;<a href="https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/analysis/layoffs-reveal-dei-policies-at-top-tech-companies-may-not-be-what-you-think/2023/02/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">have not changed</a>&rdquo; even though employees had exposed the organization&rsquo;s continual failure of a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/2/26/22297554/amazon-race-black-diversity-inclusion" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">goal to increase leadership diversity</a> a couple of years prior. Meanwhile at Twitter, employees have claimed that the social media corporation has stopped setting DEI goals at all.
To succeed in DEI, organizations need to set data-driven near-, mid- and long-term goals that are clear, actionable, and specific. Without them, progress will be hard to see, measure, and sustain.

<h2 dir="ltr">5 best practice actions for setting DEI goals</h2>
Organizations globally struggle with an expectation gap on setting DEI goals. Faced with huge targets, they tend to either set goals that are far too ambitious, or struggle to set them at all. Both routes lead to a series of inconsistent and unconnected efforts that hamper progress on DEI.
Decades of research into goal-setting theory tells us that the most effective goals must be achievable, but feel challenging enough to keep us motivated. They also need to be timely, measurable and specific&mdash;it&rsquo;s the same reason why setting a New Year&rsquo;s resolution to lose weight is far less likely to garner the results you want than setting a goal of going to the gym three times a week.
When setting DEI goals, the same criteria apply. Setting clear, actionable DEI goals that lead to measurable, sustainable progress is the only way to gain momentum on your biggest DEI challenges.
Business alignment, ownership, and data-driven measurement are key.

<h3 dir="ltr">1. Map goals to larger strategic objectives</h3>
We know that building diverse and inclusive organizations is how we win in the future. But historically, DEI has sat on the sidelines of the organization. This makes it much harder to see how DEI goals connect to strategic objectives, or even how DEI moves your organization forward.
Mapping DEI goals to your organization&rsquo;s larger strategic priorities requires you to connect it to your organization&rsquo;s mission and values, explained Carol Watson, Chief Inclusion Officer at global communications agency BCW Global, in our latest ebook, <a href="https://5keyshifts.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">The essential guide to data-driven DEI transformation</a>.
&ldquo;[DEI] needs to be hardwired into the spine of the organization,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But people won&rsquo;t change unless you pay attention to the things they care about. In a professional services company, that could be clients. In retail, it could be sales merchandising and product.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Aligning DEI with business-critical outcomes is how you get people to care, because you&rsquo;re supporting what your organization values as important&mdash;whether that&rsquo;s performance, shifting culture, mirroring the marketplace. All of those could be true, depending on who the stakeholder is, and how you adjust your conversation. But when everyone understands that it&rsquo;s critical to your business, everyone becomes accountable.&rdquo;
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">

Carol Watson

Chief Inclusion Officer

<h3 dir="ltr">2. Make sure goals are achievable&mdash;and data-driven</h3>
When setting DEI goals, organizations often unintentionally shoot for the moon&mdash;and miss. They set goals to &lsquo;improve diversity&rsquo;, or &lsquo;close the gender pay gap&rsquo;, without any clear idea of how to get there. 
Don&rsquo;t get us wrong&mdash;these are great long-term visions. But without specificity and clarity, even the most well-intentioned of goals will fail to launch, because they&rsquo;re so big and overwhelming that organizations find it difficult to know where to start. And when organizations can&rsquo;t&nbsp;start, they can&rsquo;t make sustainable, visible progress. Over time, this will lead to loss of trust among their employees.

Setting achievable, measurable goals on DEI means breaking down huge, overwhelming goals into smaller steps that scaffold progress. Data and intersectional measurement are the foundation of this process. To set more actionable DEI goals, it might help to take a product-based approach that focuses on continuous improvement. When setting new goals, use data to evaluate why the goal is meaningful, and identify who, what, where, and when. Then, re-evaluate your goal progress continuously based on real-time data:
<ul>
<li dir="ltr" aria-level="1">
What is the key problem we&rsquo;re trying to solve?
</li>
<li dir="ltr" aria-level="1">
How will achieving this goal contribute to our organization?
</li>
<li dir="ltr" aria-level="1">
How will we measure success?
</li>
<li dir="ltr" aria-level="1">
What are the KPIs that our approach to achieve our goal is working?
</li>
<li dir="ltr" aria-level="1">
Whose input do we need to achieve this goal?
</li>
<li dir="ltr" aria-level="1">
How often will we evaluate and adjust this goal?
</li>
</ul>

<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 16pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;" id="docs-internal-guid-7380b734-7fff-5563-94de-37746de17778"></h3>

<h3 dir="ltr">3. Define ownership at a department or team level</h3>
DEI won&rsquo;t work long-term if it&rsquo;s solely the responsibility of your DEI or HR team&mdash;it&rsquo;s a collaborative, cross-functional effort that requires the input of the whole organization. The best way to get people on board is by creating greater ownership of goals at a department or team-level.&nbsp;
In the workplace, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-00998-001" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">research</a> shows that making goals transparent to the entire business is a strong factor in their successful achievement. Creating a set of quarterly KPIs that dovetail with each department&rsquo;s strategic goals and having teams report upwards and laterally on their progress will scale ownership of DEI across the organization while keeping it central to each team&rsquo;s day-to-day operations.

<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 16pt; margin-bottom: 4pt;" id="docs-internal-guid-7380b734-7fff-5563-94de-37746de17778"></h3>

&ldquo;We meet with each leader and review their data, looking at key metrics like retention data in depth,&rdquo; explained DEI expert Lily Lamboy in our recent ebook. &ldquo;We then set KPIs that help each unit reflect on their progress. In reality, they&rsquo;re usually a series of yes/no questions: Did everyone in your unit go to hiring manager training? Did you do a quarterly presentation of your DEI data to employees? This creates observable, process-driven progress and centers DEI as a business priority.
&ldquo;When everyone can say they hit 100% of their goals, it creates a sense of positive forward momentum, meaning we can set more complex, ambitious KPIs next year.&rdquo;
Equipping teams with the right data is key to maintaining forward momentum. Giving key stakeholders within each department or team access to DEI data analytics will help teams review their progress more regularly, and foster further ownership for DEI goal setting and accomplishment.&nbsp;
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<h3 dir="ltr">4. Communicate progress, continuously</h3>
To make progress on DEI, we need to talk about it&mdash;all the time. And that goes for internally as well as externally. &nbsp;
Communicating goals and goal progress isn&rsquo;t just essential for showing employees the progress you&rsquo;ve made, it&rsquo;s vital for creating employee buy-in, and ensuring that every unit of your business is pulling in the same direction.&nbsp;
Taking a data-driven approach to reporting on your progress will help employees connect your DEI program to tangible results and keep its importance top of mind. Use company all hands meetings and internal messaging channels to keep employees in the loop about your organization&rsquo;s progress. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/product/reporting/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">giving employees access to data dashboards</a> so they can see your progress in action will help further trust and transparency.&nbsp;
But while it&rsquo;s natural to want to focus on your progress and successes, beware of only showing your employees the DEI highlight reel. Maintaining trust and progress on DEI only works when you&rsquo;re transparent about the things that aren&rsquo;t going well, as much as the ones that are. Being honest about missing a goal, or an emerging pay gap, for example, and showing the data behind it, helps build understanding, and may even lead to some creative suggestions.
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<h3 dir="ltr">5. Measure, adjust, repeat</h3>
Feedback is essential to effective goal-setting. Data&mdash;both quantitative and qualitative&mdash;is your feedback for measuring whether or not your DEI efforts are working. It tells you the impact of your actions, when it&rsquo;s time to set new goals, and how to course-correct the ones that have veered off-piste.
But much like setting goals themselves, feedback must be specific and actionable in order for organizations to use it to its full advantage. And often in DEI, organizations use their big-picture metrics, like representation, which is unlikely to give them a true picture of their actual progress.
In reality, it&rsquo;s far more impactful to drill down into your data using intersectional measurement to get a more accurate view of your progress. Continuously evaluate your goal progress by segmenting your data by dimensions of diversity, business units, office location, and different areas of the employee lifecycle, like compensation or promotion rates, to understand what&rsquo;s working, and what needs adjusting.

<h2 dir="ltr">Getting data-driven on DEI goals</h2>
Ultimately, creating a set of clear, shared DEI goals can help organizations drive measurable, visible progress on DEI. Setting goals&mdash;big and small&mdash;upfront will not only give you a direction of travel, but it will also provide the roadmap for progress, drive ownership, and scale continuous, sustainable progress across your organization.&nbsp;
But data is key to making doing this work work long-term. Dandi&rsquo;s real-time, intersectional analytics platform means organizations like BCW Global, Blue Shield, and Braze have complete oversight of where their DEI program is working&mdash;and where it isn&rsquo;t&mdash;to set and meet goals that scaffold long-term progress.

<h3><a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/request/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Book a demo to find out how Dandi can help your organization meet its DEI targets</a>.</h3>

There are lots of choices for DEI software—business intelligence, people analytics, or purpose-built solutions like Dandi. This article breaks down the pros and cons of each.

Buyer's Guide: Choosing the right DEI software

<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a longstanding debate about whether a generalist or specialist is best. Honestly, in most cases, it depends. It depends on the need, the level of expertise required, and the desired impact of the work.&nbsp;
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same thinking applies to technology. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the DEI analytics space, there are multiple options: a general purpose business intelligence tool designed for any analytics, a people analytics tool, or a specialized DEI analytics tool with expertise in ethics, privacy, intersectionality, and more. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While there is no one size fits all approach, there are real pros and cons to each option. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this article, I'll take you through your choices.

<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" id="docs-internal-guid-34173971-7fff-1ced-abbf-60b6e1db4450"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Business intelligence (BI) tools</h2>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pros:<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Endless possibilities; your company may already have a BI solution <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cons:<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Data configuration and maintenance can be heavy lifts; weak security protocols <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Business intelligence tools offer incredible flexibility and customization of data. Data sources might come from marketing, operations, pricing, employees and more. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within DEI, there are some real advantages here. For instance, if you want to bring data on supplier diversity together with data on employee diversity, you can. If you want to bring data on employer branding together with data on inclusion surveys, you can. The opportunities are endless.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet, there are severe limitations to these efforts. After all, when<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a tool has no bounds, it also has no specialization. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, the data pipeline must be structured and maintained. This often means a large investment in creating data warehouses/data lakes, developing ETL processes, and accounting for data cleanliness. These efforts can be significant.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On top of formulating the data pipeline, you'll also have to create your dashboards and charts one by one. Again, a serious investment of resources is required. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This often requires a larger team to create the views, and then maintain them. If you have 50 dashboards, maintenance of these dashboards is time consuming. When data pipelines change, dashboards error out. When metric definitions change, dashboards must be updated. When end users change, dashboards must be amended. There are many scenarios where maintenance alone takes significant time.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, perhaps the most major limitation is with regard to security and privacy. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike specialized tools familiar with DEI and people data, general business intelligence tools are not built with privacy in mind. That&rsquo;s not to say they can&rsquo;t be configured; generally they can with appropriate encryption, firewalls, and permissions.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But these permissions are much less secure, much less flexible, and much less scalable. If the biggest risk in DEI analytics had to be named, it would be privacy. This is not a time to mess around.

<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" id="docs-internal-guid-b0daaec7-7fff-11aa-64e7-1ac1fb0c12f2"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> analytics t<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ools</h2>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pros: <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Central hub for people insights; <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">easier to set up than BI tools<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cons:<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Often lack essential DEI features like <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/4-ways-to-use-intersectional-measurement/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">intersectional measurement</a>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moving down the funnel of specificity are general people analytics tools. These are tools designed specifically to handle people data across the employee lifecycle. Generally, these tools are owned by People Analytics teams and utilized across the business. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">General people analytics tools solve many of the pain points created by business intelligence tools. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They structure data pipelines, offer hundreds of out-of-the-box visualizations, and maintain charts in a robust fashion. In general, the human capital resource investment is significantly less than with a business intelligence tool.<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Security and privacy are also usually handled in a more robust way. Typically, line item identification is obscured, and the focus is on aggregate analytics. Permissions can be scaled more easily. ETL is often handled by the software itself, and therefore secure. These are critical features to maintain confidentiality and protect privacy.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">

<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the biggest benefits of a general people analytics tool is embedding DEI in all employee analytics. As a &ldquo;one-stop-shop," it&rsquo;s possible that more stakeholders will use the tool because they are already consuming other data points in it. When appropriate, getting stakeholders to utilize the analytics provided is critical, and this type of tooling can be instrumental in accomplishing that.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, there are still limitations of general people analytics software. Without specified DEI knowledge, there are likely to be gaps in capabilities. For instance, analytics around intersectionality are typically not pre-configured. Analyses around pay equity, if present at all, are often missing important control factors.&nbsp;
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps the biggest limitation is around regulatory requirements and risk. Without specialized expertise in regulations like pay transparency, GDPR, and ethical AI, there are some serious gaps. These gaps introduce risk.

<h2>Specialized DEI analytics tools</h2>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pros: <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Core features purpose-built for DEI; address important privacy concerns
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cons:<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> May be viewed as duplicative to other software the business already uses
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, there are specialized DEI analytics tools. These tools are your DEI experts. They support the nuance of DEI. They support the regulations in DEI. They reduce the risk when it comes to DEI. These benefits should not be overlooked.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, unlike general people analytics tools, these tools can be implemented under legal privilege. In these scenarios, counsel aims to identify inequities in the organization in order to find solutions to reduce risk. Because these analyses may uncover bias, legal privilege protects this information from being discoverable by court. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This may sound questionable to employees&mdash;why would an organization need to protect these analyses? However, many organizations need to protect their assets and investors, and by doing this work under privilege, they gain the visibility needed to take action and work to rectify them. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another huge value-add is around DEI storytelling. With the ability to create custom reports and visualizations, there&rsquo;s a clear focused destination for all of your DEI insights. With these tools, the ability to leverage well-defined metrics with ease is key. No longer do your leaders need to request unique views for their organizations; instead, identified filters can be applied with the click of a button, showing leadership the gaps in their departments or focus areas. In fact, leadership can be granted the ability to self-serve, eliminating long delays due to manual efforts.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These tools also provide the capability to engage in ongoing, real-time gap analyses. Focus areas shift frequently, and having the data to support investments offers a real advantage. Seeing gaps in leadership progression? Use those insights to implement leadership programs. Seeing gaps in turnover? Implement detailed exit surveys to get more insight. You can make pivots in real-time, driven by the data.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ability to conduct pay equity analysis is another huge benefit of a DEI-specific tool. <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Historically outsourced to legal teams and conducted annually, this tooling automates the analysis and gives you insight on an ongoing basis. With constant changes due to hiring and turnover, annual analysis isn&rsquo;t enough. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there is <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/blog/4-ways-to-use-intersectional-measurement/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">intersectionality</a>. Too often, DEI work is limited to gender alone, or race/ethnicity alone. But, no one is a woman in silo, or a Black person in silo. They may be a Black woman in their 30&rsquo;s, or a Hispanic male in their 50&rsquo;s. These intersectional attributes must be embedded in all DEI analytics. Specialized tools, like <a href="https://www.itsdandi.com/" style="text-decoration: none;" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #1155cc; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; -webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dandi</a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, bring this to the front and center.&nbsp;
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, often, DEI specific tools provide benchmarks. Every organization I&rsquo;ve ever worked with has asked for benchmarks. While there are pros and cons to using benchmarks, the ability to easily compare your organization to industry norms is meaningful. Using personalized, organization-specific metrics alongside industry benchmarks gives you a holistic view of your company's progress.<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">

<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" id="docs-internal-guid-0e94a40a-7fff-8845-0815-f4351a1e8337"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conclusion</h2>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ultimately there is no one-size-fits all solution. Each business has to look at their existing tech stack, and their DEI goals to make the appropriate choices for them.
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, if you're looking to streamline the work of DEI, purpose-built software like Dandi offers real advantages. 
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organizational risk is decreased significantly. Insights are more accurate and applicable, with intersectionality at the forefront. There are support partners who are specialized in DEI who can guide you along the way. These benefits should not be taken lightly.

<h3>Want to learn more about Dandi?&nbsp;<a href="https://demo.itsdandi.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Book a demo</a> with our team.</h3>

Announcing SOC 2 monitoring powered by Drata

Dandi’s SOC 2 accreditation reflects our ongoing commitment to enterprise-grade security standards.

More to come

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Pride @ Work: Larry Womack, HubSpot

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