DEI Assessments
Understand your current state of diversity, equity and inclusion.
A baseline assessment determines your current state of DEI and provides a thorough analysis of your diversity, intersectionality, gaps, risks, challenges and opportunities. Assessments provide you with actionable recommendations to make impactful positive change.
Data & Analytics
We can work with your existing organizational data or conduct a DEI survey to help you understand the diversity of your organization, employee experiences and needs, and sentiments and perceptions of DEI. We can run predictive analytics on various types of data including DEI surveys, compensation/pay data, engagement, recruitment, promotion/career advancement, or turnover, as examples.
Policy & Process
We can conduct a thorough review of your internal policies, processes, and practices to detect issues and equity gaps. These assessments can help you identify the sources of systemic inequities, biases, and power imbalances that create a negative workplace culture or produce an exclusionary external output.
Consultations
We can design and conduct interviews and focus group sessions to capture the lived experiences and specific needs of your employees and communities. Qualitative data helps us to dig deeper on specific issues and uncover innovative opportunities.
Benchmarking
We conduct benchmarking and/or a comparative analysis to measure the current state of DEI at your organization amongst your peers in your industry and best practices.
Common Questions
A full assessment can take anywhere between 3 months and one year in length, depending on the size of the organization and your timelines.
We highly recommend completing a full assessment. However, organizations can select which pieces of an assessment will work for them. For instance, we can solely conduct a survey followed up with consultation sessions; or, a comprehensive policy and process review followed by a comparative analysis. We are flexible and adaptable to meet our client’s needs.
The cost of an assessment is determined by the size, scope and timeline of the client along with the complexity of the project. Please contact us for an accurate quote and proposal.
Typically, once an assessment is completed, we can work with you on creating the report and co-designing a formal DEI Strategy and Action Plan for your organization, assigning accountabilities, timelines and creating KPIs for effective monitoring and evaluation. We also recommend becoming a Canadian Equality Subscription Service member to receive ongoing support, coaching and advice and to access a suite of capacity-building learning and resources.
We want to develop long-term relationships with our clients and support them in their full DEI journeys. Depending on the recommendations in the report, we can provide customized training and/or design and implement different policies or programming. We also offer DEI coaching and capacity-building support through our Subscription Services.
Assessment outcomes vary according to the client and their unique challenges and gaps. They are tailored to every client and recommendations are targeted to meet your exact needs to advance and accelerate DEI.
Our Approach
Alignment
We begin every assessment with an alignment phase where we provide an initial DEI workshop for senior leaders along with a coaching/learning program to prepare them for the DEI journey. It is critical to frame the importance, intent, impact, and strategic direction of this work, and to support leaders to understand their role as key sponsors. We also conduct initial alignment sessions with existing DEI Committees, ERGs, and all staff to help align the organization on the importance and urgency of DEI, clarify the upcoming assessment work, and establish trust in the process.
Assessment
Once the alignment work is complete, we will prepare for the assessment by developing a communications and change management plan for the organization to maximize buy-in, participation and overall success. We will design and launch an organization-wide DEI survey and a series of consultations (interviews and/or focus groups). Depending on your needs, we will conduct a policy and process review through a DEI lens that could include documents and inputs from HR, recruitment, operations, marketing, or procurement, as examples. We will then conduct a comparative review to capture learnings and best practices of other similar organizations.
Reporting
We will then analyze and sythesize the data from the assessment phase using an intersectional approach into a comprehensive findings and recommendations report. Intersectionality is an expansive way of thinking that draws people into a more thoughtful dialogue on identity, power, and privilege at a systemic level. We will present the findings and recommendations to key project stakeholder groups, including senior leadership, to establish a deep and nuanced level of understanding of the current state. We will guide leaders with the report dissemination and presentation to the broader organization.