Incorporating diversity and inclusion practices into your workplace not only benefits individuals in their career journeys. It can also improve overall company performance. Diversity can help companies to reach a wider audience for their products and services. Inclusion ensures that all employees feel equally at home and valued, which can improve engagement and productivity. These goals can be incorporated into human resource information systems through data collection and goal setting.
To help companies incorporate these goal settings practices, our Matchr team has compiled a list of the different ways that your HRIS may be able to help you reach those goals within your own organization.
HRIS Compliance
Maintaining compliance with legal requirements is essential to any human resources department. An HRIS can help companies to remain compliant with the Diversity and Inclusion Index (DII) or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), for example. You can set company standards that comply with those regulations and generate reports to track progress.
Why Compliance Matters
Staying compliant can not only help companies meet their D&I goals but also avoid any fines or other consequences that might arise from not meeting legal requirements.
Continuous Feedback
Feedback from employees regarding your diversity and inclusion initiatives is crucial. While data is important, having real feedback from actual people is vital to meeting your goals. A set of D&I-related questions can be developed to measure what your employees think and feel from their personal experiences within an organization. This keeps the human element of future growth alive in a sea of software algorithms.
Why Continuous Feedback Matters
Data can measure progress but may not tell you how successful your D&I initiatives are at improving actual employee experience.
Data Collection & Trend Identification
Trend identification within data sources is invaluable in improving workplace diversity and inclusion. HRIS software collects data on your D&I practices and can let HR or other company management know if trends are not improving. For example, many HRIS software platforms include survey integration for anonymous employee feedback. The software can also offer insights that may offer useful recommendations.
Why Data Collection & Trend Identification Matter
It’s important to analyze data and identify trends so you can see how your D&I initiatives have changed over time.
Visualizing Data Trends
To move forward beyond simple data trend collection, the visualization of that diversity data can help HR and company leaders gain greater insight via charts, graphs, tables, or virtual HRIS dashboards. Graphs or charts can show different diversity categories such as age, race, sexual orientation, gender identification, and more. The visualization of the data can help HR see details more in-depth and even encourage predictive modeling analytics to find meaningful inclusion insights.
Why Visualizing Data Trends Matter
Data trend visualization takes insights a step further from simple data collection and creates deeper insights that can be enabled for future growth and improvement in the diversity realm. HRIS visual analytic tools create room for exploration and make it easier to understand.
Creating Action Plans
After data has been captured and analyzed, HR professionals can use HRIS software to put together an action plan for the future improvement of diversity and inclusion initiatives. The software may be able to suggest action plans as well as offer insights into current and past trends.
Why Creating Action Plans Matter
Having data available is one thing, but having an action plan pushes for reasonable accountability and change in diversity practices in the organization. Without an action plan, many companies may fall back into old habits and fail to improve their D&I initiatives.
Diversifying Applicant Tracking
Some companies have had difficulty with diverse hiring because their applicants aren’t. A top HRIS system can help you to expand your sources of applicants. ATS features involve jobs board posting as well as social media job openings. You may also be able to use the software to ensure that your job listing isn’t written in a way that is discouraging certain applicants.
Why Diversifying Applicant Tracking Matters
If your applicants aren’t diverse, then your workforce won’t be, either. Your D&I initiatives should begin with your hiring practices. Seeking out qualified candidates with a range of skills, backgrounds, and experiences can help widen your applicant pool and ensure you hire top talent.
Improving Succession Planning
Some organizations may have diverse hiring practices but still fail to implement D&I in their succession planning. This could result in a diverse workforce at the lower levels of the company but not in the decision-making positions. An HRIS can help your organization to implement D&I across the entire organization from top to bottom.
Why Improving Succession Planning Matters
Diversity and inclusion are essential across all levels of an organization in order to capitalize on the benefits. Decision-makers must also include people from a range of different backgrounds and experiences.
Diversity Feature Integrations
Data collection can be integrated into the company management system to optimize the success and performance of inclusion practices. Since many of the best HRIS software systems integrate with popular third-party applications, these external resources can add an extra layer of sophistication to diversity data management.
Why Diversity Feature Integrations Matter
Diversity feature integration is essential for online companies that use a variety of third-party tools. HRIS software can work alongside these outside tools so teams do not need to forgo other measurement methods that have worked for them in the past.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement practices can be initiated through polls, suggestion boxes, or surveys that are filled out by employees. This feedback can help companies find inclusion gaps in their hiring or succession planning processes and create comprehensive improvement reports for future use.
Why Continuous Improvement Matters
Your employees can be an excellent resource in looking for areas of improvement. Do they trust their team members, and do they feel a sense of belonging with the organization? Improving employee engagement with HRIS technology starts by assessing these key components of diversity and inclusion. When you continuously come back to these questions, policies or processes can continually be improved to encourage inclusion among professionals.
