In every organisation the diversity story is different.
Our experience has taught us that asking open questions to your staff and analyzing the responses they give in their own words will give you a very powerful insight into that story.
In one very successful company, they set us the task of finding out why they had been talking constructively about diversity for five years and yet getting little traction with their middle management. We discovered that diversity was not a priority for staff because the company was so successful no-one could see what problem greater diversity was going to solve. Then when we asked staff about the future. And they began to see that they didn’t have the diversity of backgrounds, approaches, cultures to equip their future strategy to vary their offer and expand internationally.
Another company they talked warmly about how it was a ‘family’, how that made it a warm and including place to work. And indeed it is a good place to work. But when we did an INSIGHT exercise it was significant how many women and younger staff felt that actually this ‘family’ masked a very “boysie” culture as one (very senior) women put it. Fine if you’re part of the “family”. But even she, in a top role in the company, felt she had to negotiate that culture everyday.
Using open questionnaires, designed jointly with you, we discover deficits, unease and also hidden talents and eloquent clues to how further to unlock your staff’s ambitions and abilities.
We will help you to find the true story of diversity in your company. One more example – a partnership had only 11% women partners (not unusually low in their sector but they did have also have more partners called ‘David’ – 14% – than women!). What was happening? What the INSIGHT work revealed was that ambitious women were leaving early. The partnership was spending significant amounts on recruiting and training these women which was just benefitting other companies.
Our insight work consists of four phases:
- The design, with you, of the questionnaire
- Distribution to staff (through survey monkey or similar) with the responses in their own words (no 1-5 or A-D or multiple choice) coming back confidentially to us
- Analysis by us of the results
- Presentation to you of our analysis. We will (i) read the staff’s own words to you (ii) provide you with an Exec Summary and (iii) a themed report of the full responses.