These days, a strong focus on diversity and inclusion is about more than just including all the voices in your workplace culture – it’s about leveraging competitive advantage. In fact, you might actually go as far as saying that it’s essential to the success of any modern-day business.
Much in the way that cinnamon, cardamom, allspice and ginger combine to make a delectable koesister; and the likes of Siya Kolisi, Faf du Plessis and Cheslin Kolbe overlapped their skill sets to bring home the Rugby World Cup in 2019, companies with a nice mix of genders, races and age groups in the mix tend to be the bomb.
Read more: The top 7 benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace
One innovative way to pave the way for improved diversity and inclusion at your company is to leverage the rich mine of information that is your business’ benefits data.
These days, good SaaS-based employee recognition and rewards platforms draw on hundreds of individual user data points to generate people analytics and talent data in order to enhance programme effectiveness. This includes everything from participant registration, usage and sign-in, and social activity, to recognition and points activity pertaining to participant earn, spend and account balances.
Moving beyond the analysis of employee recognition and engagement data, this type of behaviour analytics can provide deep workforce insight. From gaining a better understanding of which talent dimensions drive performance, to analysing the behaviour of high-performing teams, it can help organisations to make better talent management decisions that lead to better performance, and results.
So, how can you harness all this awesome data in order to boost diversity and inclusion?
HR teams should view their employee recognition and rewards data as a window into the dynamic needs of the company’s employees, and keep tabs on how these change. When this is the case, nimble HR practitioners can use these insights to pivot their engagement strategies in accordance with the needs of the people it stands to benefit.
Example: When COVID-10 closed down spaces like gyms, this type of benefit became somewhat redundant. Instead, clear-sighted employers could redirect their benefits budget towards things like additional leave or charitable donations on behalf of their workforce.
These types of moves on the part of an employer lays the groundwork for exceptional employee experience, which in turn directly translates to a vastly improved employer brand. Once the word gets out that a business is sensitive to the needs of employees across the board, it will necessarily become a beacon for diverse talent.
For instance, if highly-skilled working mothers learn that a particular company offers their employees the opportunity to use their recognition points to put towards childcare or tutoring, they’d be far more likely to apply there. Likewise, differently abled jobseekers with in-demand skill sets would be drawn by insightful reward options like the services of a physiotherapist, or OT support.
Read more: 7 Steps to driving a high-performance culture with people analytics
However, data should also be read and interpreted in context…
One important thing to remember when putting analytics to work is to view it in context, especially when you are using data to make forecasts based on what you think your employees may want and appreciate as reward options in future.
To ensure that you build a suite of benefits that speak to individual needs, always check that your assumptions about a given demographic do not go unchecked or unsubstantiated.
For example: When companies in the United Kingdom found that more than 60% of new fathers did not take them up on proffered paternity leave, they could have assumed that these men were simply not interested in taking this time to spend at home. However, on closer inspection, based on survey data of this demographic, it was found that the low paternity leave pay rates made the offer unattractive.
This makes sense when you see it from the point of view of a person who had just added a new member to their family, and would rather be secure in the knowledge that they could provide for them rather than risking their livelihood to ‘take time off’.
If the businesses had not taken it upon themselves to make further inquiries into the matter, they may have assumed that paternity leave simply was not all that popular among the men working for them, and taken it from the table at a future date. This type of oversight has the potential to create an unintended system of self-fulfilling biases.
One important way to make your recognition data more valuable
In the end, it all comes down to providing your employees with as much choice as possible when it comes to the rewards they are able to select. The more options you give them, the more insightful your data findings will be, especially when you look at it from the point of view of different demographics, age groupings etc.
DID YOU KNOW? A key differentiator of bountiXP is that its points system integrates with the banking and payment system via three redemption mechanisms: digital vouchers, our virtual card and our awardscard® backed by Mastercard.
Employees are able to redeem their points and transact on e-commerce sites, and in-store using their smartphones or with the physical swipe and pay awardscard®. Via the platform, employees can also check their points balance and transaction history at any time. Sign up for a FREE trial to see how it works here.
Now you know! Check back soon for more insider insights and helpful advice from the bountiXP HR mavens.
In the meantime, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for to-the-point videos that unpack the benefits of employee recognition and rewards, and how you can lay the groundwork for a happy workspace that benefits from diversity and inclusion, sky-high productivity levels and more.