Workforce Diversity

It is rare to find an organization that does NOT have problems increasing the diversity of its workforce.  In fact, workforce diversity issues are in the news almost every day now, and the associated issues often appear in the news:

Silicon Valley’s Diversity Problem

Silicon Valley's Tech Workforce Diversity Has Long Way To Go

Why Can't Silicon Valley Solve Its Diversity Problem?

While many organizations are trying to solve the first part of this problem (hiring a larger percentage of employees with diverse backgrounds), almost no one is working on keeping employees with diverse backgrounds!  We are the first organization to develop big data analytical methodologies with the primary goal of manipulating workforce assignments in order to keep those employees.

We approached this problem because of stories we'd heard about organizations hiring employees with diverse backgrounds but being unable to keep them.  The issue is often that those new employees are placed in workgroups of co-workers who have little or no experience working with others who are unlike themselves.

Psychology research tells us that we are more open and accepting of others with backgrounds different than ours as we increase our interactions with those others.  Our database algorithms will tell you precisely with which employees you should be placing your new hires so as to make them the most comfortable in your organization.  This action is not as easy as just having the new employee work with others of the same background as this can lead to "cliques" within your workforce.  Such cliques can actually lead to a reduction in interactions among employees and so are generally detrimental to workplace success.

One of the outputs of our database toolset is what we call an employee's "Diversity Experience Index."  This numeric value tells you, for each employee, what level of workplace task experience they have interacting with co-workers who are: women, minorities, veterans, handicapped, or whatever other under-represented group you wish to consider.  Using this data, we can help you create a workgroup comprised of employees who have the highest probability of positive interactions with the new employee.

We can also tell you which of your employees have the lowest Diversity Experience Index values.  This can be useful in selecting future workgroup teammates in order to get these individuals more experience working with others who have backgrounds different than their own.