Organisations have understood the necessity of D&I initiatives at work in recent years. It has been established that companies that implement strong D&I policies not only witness increased brand awareness and talent attractiveness, but also show considerably better performance than their peers. The pandemic may have accelerated corporate India's diversity and inclusion (D&I) commitment, employee expectations have increased and addressing those needs is an evolved approach.  While it does look as if a lot has been done in this area, the reality is that it has still not made any significant progress, since, according to a research study by Indeed India, almost 71% of employees believe their company's D&I policies are "found wanting," with 35% saying they need to be improved.

Individual and structural bias must be addressed to cultivate a diverse organisation and an inclusive culture. The market for D&I solutions aimed to assist in systemic D&I approaches in businesses is quickly growing, for which technology is a key aspect. It has the potential to be crucial to D&I performance at various stages of an employee’s life cycle.

Talent Acquisition

The first step towards creating an inclusive workplace is to acquire the right talent. According to statistics, 52% of HR professionals believe that discovering the proper applicants from a vast pool of candidates is one of the most difficult aspects of talent acquisition

Organisations can use digital tools to access a bigger, more varied pool of candidates with cost efficiencies while also ensuring a more mature competency-based strategy. More businesses should use methods that allow assessments based solely on qualification or abilities, whether through 'blind recruiting' or standardisation of interview techniques to avoid bias. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used in this section to anticipate how long it will take to fill a job position based on historical data, allowing recruiters to reprioritise and modify plans as may be needed.

Many solutions today are helping hiring professionals to reach out to diverse talent pools, reducing unconscious bias in the recruiting process, and facilitating effective candidate selection.

Employee Management Analytics

D&I analytics are critical for gaining workplace insights, influencing decision-making, and prioritising D&I areas that need to be improved. Information on diversity representation within the company, significant sources of talent, promotion and turnover rates of varied talent, and statistics on pay equality are examples of common data recorded for analytics. These solutions provide intelligence that may be used to measure the impact of various D&I initiatives on business outcomes.

Tools used for data analytics reveal important facts that might not be obvious otherwise. With this information, managers can create a dashboard that combines statistics to analyse and forecast several key metrics both across productivity and diversity trends and impact on the organisational KPI’s. 

Managing Employee Engagement and Experience

According to the Oracle Workplace APAC 2021 survey, hyper-personalised employee experiences are revolutionising talent acquisition and retention.

Employee engagement D&I technology is primarily focused on employee experiences, communication, and individual employee empowerment. Listening and engagement software is another significant component of D&I solutions. Many feedback and listening services allow companies to design survey questions and use sentiment analysis to uncover common themes in their comments. As a result, actionable insights are readily available.

For example, virtual inclusion platforms like eLearning Webinars and applications allow teams to attend inclusion coaching sessions on-demand and leaders to implement concrete improvements in real-time. The most basic yet effective tools are the ones that facilitate tracking employee engagement which is seeing growth in hybrid workplaces.

Trainings

Diversity training is gaining popularity as a new method to boost D&I and assist employees in better comprehending their coworkers' perspectives – including those of different ethnicity, gender, or ability – and practice behaviours in the workplace. Humans acquire knowledge more effectively via experiences than through lectures, and this is likely the most basic explanation of how using technology in Diversity training can result in a more meaningful experience. At the same time it is also very important to train and coach managers on what they can do to foster an enabling environment within their teams.

Periodic training guarantees that (conscious and unconscious) biases and prejudices are reviewed, and employees from underrepresented groups do not feel stigmatised or fear barriers to their career progress, which is one of the most important parts of any D&I strategy. These trainings can take a variety of formats, including short films, quizzes, podcasts, movie screenings, community-staged plays, and informal discussion groups in which experts may be invited. Participation of top management in such events greatly enhances the value and adoption of D&I within the enterprise. 

Even in its formative stages, the union of technology with modern D&I  practices has brought about great change and increased adoption of this concept will certainly change how businesses operate since the aim of using these new-age methods is to ultimately bring about a progressive change in the attitude and outlook of the individual besides imparting knowledge.