Behind the Scenes: How the D&I Index scoring works

D&I is now a growth engine for most organisations in the UK.

Diversity refers to the variety of different characteristics within a group, while inclusion is the act of making sure everyone is included and feels like they belong. A commitment to diversity and inclusion is a commitment to creating a workplace where everyone feels valued, and respected, and where their unique perspectives are welcomed and leveraged to create a more innovative and successful organisation.

You can’t improve what you can’t measure

Organisations that fail to measure diversity and inclusion may find it difficult to identify and address areas of improvement. 

Measuring diversity and inclusion can help organisations benchmark their progress and performance and set goals for improvement. Additionally, measuring diversity and inclusion can help to ensure that organisations are adhering to legal requirements and best practices guidelines.

This is why we created the D&I Index.

What is the D&I Index?

The D&I Index (for Diversity and Inclusion Index) is a tool by HR professionals, for HR professionals to help organisations understand the value of their own D&I actions by comparing them with direct industry peers.

How does it help organisations?

The main value of the Index resides in the accuracy of the data it provides. For this reason, all organisations using it need to first submit their own anonymised data.

Note on security and anonymity of the data collected

• Data stored in EU: Our platform and data are hosted in Europe. Our data is only accessed from the UK and not transferred elsewhere outside the EEA.
• Pseudonymised data: HR DataHub collects company and employee data that has been pseudonymised. 

Read more about our security and privacy.

Access real and accurate data

The world moves fast. Trends and data move even faster, thus making one-off reports obsolete as soon as they fall into your hands. What’s more, it’s always difficult to differentiate the goals of an organisation from the reports they publish.

Private research may rhyme with ‘agenda’

Private research and surveys might not tell you the whole story. Or they might bend the truth to serve higher interests.

For instance, a 2018 study from the National Center for Biotechnology Information looking into the impact of private funding and industry sponsorship on the research agenda reveals something worrisome.

Their conclusion? After studying 36 research articles, the research group found “that corporate funding of research with commercial implications drives the research agenda away from public health priorities.”

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To make a long story short, live and anonymised data submitted by organisations themselves is the only way to see a real and accurate picture of the market at a given time. Or, as we like to call it, data with no agenda.

A recognised social proof to boost your employer brand

People want to work for organisations they can relate to.

In fact, a recent survey says that 56% of workers won’t even consider a workplace that doesn’t share their values.

What’s more, after the Great Resignation comes the Great Reflection. The latter is characterised by the fact that employees increasingly see personal value and purpose at work.

Of course, we can’t do the heavy lifting for you, but we can help you show your progress with certified badges: 

“Really impressed with the work the team at HR DataHub are undertaking. Not only the platform but also the communities they are creating to help share best practices and drive sustained change, particularly in the D&I space”

—Gemma Eley, Head of People at Hotel Chocolat

How does our D&I Index scoring work?

Let’s make something clear: No tool is perfect, and our D&I Index is no exception.

In theory, all organisations should have the ability to rank equally.

In practice, each organisation and market are unique, and many factors out of your reach can impact diversity and inclusion.

Closing the gap between theory and practice.

To reduce the gap between the D&I Index score and reality, we decided to include four measures in the calculation, each with its own weight.

• Representation by Level (50% weighting)
• Representation by Talent Area (15% weighting)
• Tenure (15% weighting)
• Pay Differentials (20% weighting)

Now, we also know that you can only measure and improve what you can compare. 

This is why the D&I Index Score each organisation receives also takes into account how peer organisations do.

The bright brains behind our D&I Index Scoring

The D&I Index was born from fruitful discussions with HR and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion world-class experts.

With their expertise and feedback, they helped craft the methodology behind the D&I Index, thus ensuring the Index is not just based on theory, but also and mostly on what really happens in the field, in various industries, all around the UK. 

The four measures in detail

1. Representation by Level

As the wording implies, Representation by Level assesses the representation of employees at all levels within your organisation. 

This is achieved by grouping employees into six broad responsibility levels, which is done as part of the data submission process.

1.  Board/Exec
2.  Director
3.  Senior Manager
4.  Manager
5. Supervisor/Professional 
6. Frontline

This is then benchmarked against the representation of other organisations within your sector, and adjusted for regionality.

We make this adjustment to ensure the scores take into consideration the unique challenges of your sector and the diversity of your local talent pool.

There is a higher weighting provided for greater representation the further up the organisation hierarchy - In other words, outperforming peer organisations at a board level will provide more points than at Entry-level.

2. Representation by Talent Area

For each sector, we have defined a list of common functions to provide a consistent and relevant way to compare the functional make-up of different organisations. This is done automatically during your data submission process, and each employees is matched to one of these functions.

Each organisation is then able to see the share of employees they have in each function compared to their overall representation. The D&I Index then looks at the averages of each talent area for each sector to set appropriate targets and make relevant recommendations.

Let’s take a few simple examples to illustrate this:

The theory (or the ‘perfect match’)

If female workers represent 30% of your entire workforce, you’d expect to see 30% of female workers in engineering, marketing, HR, etc.

The reality

ABC Ltd, an organisation in the Construction sector, has an overall female representation of 20%; their target should be to reach a 20% representation across all talent areas. 

Now, if female representation at ABC Ltd in engineering is 12% (meaning below target), and the average female representation in engineering in the industry is 4%, ABC Ltd is actually above the norm. This would be positively factored into their score.

“We have joined HRDH as it gives us access to dynamic benchmarking data across HR and specifically in Diversity & Inclusion. The technology is simple, and the regular community meetings are extremely useful.”

—Jonathan Briggs, Group Head, Talent Acquisition and Diversity & Inclusion, Aviva

3. Tenure

Our Tenure indicator looks at the average number of months since your employees joined the organisation. 

Points are assigned in two equally weighted ways:

1. External comparison: for each broad level, we compare the tenure between your company and your peer organisations.
2. Internal comparison: for each broad level, we compare the tenure between the protected group and the non-protected group to assess whether there is a large differential.

4. Pay Differentials

The Pay Differentials measure is not baselined against sector peers. It is only based on your own data.

How does this work

When your data is submitted, we assign a responsibility level ranging from 1-20. 

This is then used to compare pay for groups of employees at each level, on a like-for-like basis. 

For instance, we will compare the median pay of women at level 16 against the median pay of all men at the same level. The smaller the pay gap, the higher the points, and vice versa.

We find that this method provides more relevant information than the UK Gender Pay Gap methodology, which looks at the pay difference for all levels and functions combined.

Overall D&I Index score calculations

The more information, the more accurate and relevant the score is.

This is why only organisations that have submitted data for at least three characteristics qualify for an overall D&I Index score.

It’s not rocket science; the overall D&I Index score is simply the average score from each characteristic for which they have submitted data.

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The D&I Index overall score is a recognition that the organisation has provided enough data to assess its efforts across multiple areas and provides a single measure of inclusivity across multiple factors.

You now know everything there is to know about the D&I Index

As mentioned above, no tool is perfect. However, by working with the best people and by taking industry peers into account in the scoring, the D&I Index is able to paint the most accurate picture there is of your organisation’s performance.

Give it a try! 

Want to give our D&I Index a try? Create your HR DataHub Essentials (free) account and explore our platform. Note that data submission is only available for Pro users.

For anything else, we’re only a few clicks away. You can book a chat with us right here.