Rebecca Perrault is the VP and Global Leader of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) at Magnit where she launched Magnit's DE&I offering.
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The contingent workforce continues to make an increasingly larger impact and business-critical contribution to organizations around the world. Research from Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange found 49% of the average workforce is contingent labor. Despite the rising impact of contingent talent, organizations haven’t historically prioritized their diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) compared to full-time employees. But this is starting to change. According to a report from Staffing Industry Analysts, 26% of companies viewed DE&I for the contingent workforce as a priority in 2020. Today, 55% plan to prioritize it within the next two years. Considering the rising use of contract workers, evaluating an organization's diversity as a whole must include the contingent workforce.
Gaining insight into workers' diverse backgrounds can help inform the development of more innovative sourcing, hiring and inclusion practices and, as a result, improve these workers' ability to succeed and contribute to the organization. To successfully make this progress, industry leaders need to strategically gather, safely store and properly analyze important diversity information on their contingent workforce. Here are four steps to do this successfully.
1. Evaluate Your Contingent Worker Data Sources
Having self-identified data is a best practice for informing DE&I initiatives. However, when it comes to contract or temporary talent, companies often rely on staffing agencies to provide that data. There’s also an added layer of complexity when organizations utilize talent from multiple agencies because multiple data sources can lead to inconsistency. That said, many organizations—42%, according to the Consciously Unbiased report—aren’t motivated to collect the data themselves due to perceived co-employment risks including data access and legal exposure.
Collecting contingent workers' data from the hiring cycle through the worker journey is highly beneficial. It helps both staffing agencies and their clients by providing insights they can use to benchmark and monitor DE&I initiatives. When companies utilize self-disclosed data, it can also accelerate their progress toward reaching diversity goals. If your organization doesn’t have the resources to do this in-house, a third party can help you gather data and actionable insights to support your DE&I plan.
2. Hold The Data Safely
Diversity data is very personal, and collecting it requires trust from individuals to encourage them to voluntarily provide their information. Therefore, the data needs to be held safely. Convey the purpose and use of the information when requesting data, and clearly communicate your data protection protocols and safeguarding processes. This is key to developing trust and motivating recipients to complete voluntary disclosure.
Industry diversity data should never be shared. The insights are derived from the statistics and groups of people. As an added precaution, it's advisable to not report any group that is represented by fewer than 10 people, though some organizations use different thresholds. Enforcing strict confidentiality with limited visibility can also help ensure the data is never improperly used. Remember that collecting data not only provides insights but also accountability for change and serves as a mechanism for creating inclusion and helping groups feel seen.
3. Personalize Your Questionnaire
Your diversity form is often one of the first inclusion touchpoints with people, and it signals the importance your organization places on inclusion. There are many ways to customize the questionnaire to fit the unique needs of your company and location. Make sure to consider both legal and cultural requirements in each country recipients are based in. While it may be legal to ask certain questions, it might not be appropriate to do so or safe for workers to answer.
4. Use Insights To Inform Company DE&I Initiatives
Once you’ve gathered data, including that of your contingent and contractor workers, it’s time to derive the insights that will give you an overview of what’s happening across your business. Go beyond the overall diversity composition and segment data by leader and department. For example, a company’s total workforce may be 50% women, but delving deeper could reveal that most of them are in marketing and none are in IT. These are insights that companies can then act upon accordingly.
Create DE&I initiatives based on the data collected and focus on small wins. Identify the similarities and differences in the data and work with your managed service provider and staffing agencies to support your comprehensive talent strategy.
Focus groups and engagement survey data are also important qualitative data components. While hard numbers provide a view into what's happening in your organization, they don't tell the story or the why. For example, if the data shows women are leaving certain departments at a higher rate than men, focus groups can help determine the reasons behind the attrition rates. These narratives provide actionable measures and bring employee experiences to life for leaders.
To make real, tangible DE&I progress, focusing only on the full-time employee population is no longer enough. Both full-time and contingent workers contribute to organizational success and the business case for DE&I. Organizations that collect and utilize data across their entire workforce, including contingent workers, can make data-informed policy decisions and spend resources where the need is most significant. This allows them to set tangible, achievable goals and actualize a more diverse workforce and inclusive environment for everyone.
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