Despite the recent limelight, diversity, equity, inclusion and other similar initiatives have been around for decades.  Success with these programs, however, is far from guaranteed.  Throwing training workshops and programs at a population who is not cognitively ready could, and often does, backfire.  It risks marginalizing the exact message you are trying to convey, the change you are trying to affect.

The Pattern: For years and years, reviewing the results of a survey within your organization has probably followed a predictable pattern.

1.     Trying to understand high level, organizational trends that are occurring across your business
2.     Isolating patterns of results that suggest certain sections of the business or groups of employees may need targeted  help.
3.     Using the collected responses and patterns to make business decisions.

This is a great approach, and a framework we have designed both our entire platform and survey systems around.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion.  Although it has long been recognized as an issue, the events of this year have catapulted it to the top of the list for many organizations. The 2020 PwC Global Diversity & Inclusion Survey had an all-time high of 76% of respondents indicate that DEI “…is a priority or value” of their organization.  Let's discuss moving from priority to a data-driven strategy. 

Engagement and Performance are both key areas that a manager must manage. An organization filled with folks who hate their job or who are unable to perform is headed for disaster. It really is quite unfortunate then that "Performance" and "Engagement", despite their importance, are incredibly squishy concepts that depend on unique efforts and experiences of every member of a team. This presents a daunting challenge to managers, that few appear to be meeting well. 

However, this may be because the tools that we use to approach problems within the workplace lead us to the wrong conclusions about how to achieve important, but squishy goals.

Organizations are immensely complicated social structures whose engines run on human creativity and effort. As a consequence, diagnosing what is and isn’t working as intended can be incredibly complicated. This high degree of complexity is, in fact, why we developed the Flow@Work model of engagement. We believe, based on review of the available evidence, that engagement is at the core of understanding how well the processes and structures of a given business are working for those who work within it. 

So, you have gone through the survey process, carefully reviewed the results, and decided on how to respond to the results. Now you are left with the most important part of all, deciding on the questions that you will need to answer going forward. Put another way, how do we ensure that our next survey process leverages what we have learned, builds on what we plan to do, and answers the questions that are central to the organization?