Dive Brief:

• ADP added a diversity, equity and inclusion dashboard to its DataCloud suite, the company announced April 13, which will allow clients to breakdown the workforces by organization, department and job level and answer questions like "Which areas of my organization are not diverse?" or "How diverse is my leadership distribution?"
• The dashboard also enables employers to compare metrics to other businesses and can advise employers on where to make investments in talent to remain competitive, the company said.
• "Now more than ever, companies need to take a scientific approach to their diversity and inclusion efforts," Bob Lockett, chief diversity and talent officer at ADP, said in a statement. "The right data tools can enhance how they evaluate the makeup of their workforce and inform the decisions they need to help them hit their diversity goals, and ultimately make a huge difference for their people and their community."  

​Dive Insight:

Diversity data has gained importance as more employers seek ways to improve the employee experience. Glassdoor, for example, announced in February that it would break down company ratings and salary information by demographic in an attempt to bring more transparency to the hiring process.

But HR pros must be careful not to focus solely on metrics alone, industry veteran Josh Bersin said in an online panel hosted in November, as metrics won’t drive the progress employers seek. "Inclusion is the goal, diversity is the outcome," Bersin said. "The thing that drives engagement, retention and performance ... is a feeling of belonging."

A focus on "small elements of diversity" or diversity on the surface level could hurt employers in the long run, a Clutch report from May 2020 showed. Few employers surveyed valued a specific inclusion initiative; the most popular initiative was diversity training.

The big move to remote work in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic brought further attention to D&I, however; HR leaders in a HireVue survey said that the addition of remote work would help them achieve diversity goals and that location would no longer be a barrier to recruitment. One-third of respondents said they would re-examine job listings to include inclusive language.