PAFOW Diversity & Inclusion Discussion

Networks
1

Hey there!

I recently watched a video of Polinode at a PAFOW event and Diversity & Inclusion was mentioned as a use case. I was wondering if anyone had any particular questions or approaches do Diversity and Inclusion that worked well? I am planning to do something on a small scale soon and it would be great to hear from anyone else with some prior experience.

Garland

2

D&I is certainly a great application of ONA and one that is increasing in popularity. There are quite a few approaches one can take to the analysis. What generally works well is to ask a general name generating question to begin with, e.g. “Please identify up to 20 people at X who are important to your ability to accomplish your work priorities.” You can then:

  • Compare the total number of nominations received for this question by gender (noting of course that gender is not the only D&I category of interest!). If you are comfortable with linear regression that is a great approach i.e. to control for other factors like tenure and seniority.

  • Examine the collaboration matrices in Polinode under Reports and then Collaboration. The screenshot below demonstrates this. This report is dynamic to the visible network so it’s possible to filter by location/division/etc. to understand how collaboration by gender varies.

rsz_screenshot_from_2020-03-31_17-03-16
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Another question that is very helpful in the context of D&I is to ask about formal or informal mentors. That then allows you to really understand where in the organization say the female population is well connected/supported from a mentorship perspective. You can also answer questions like “are our high potential female employees appropriately connected to more senior levels in the organization from a mentorship perspective?”. That leads you to a truly diverse organization!

3

Thank you Chad, that is super helpful!

4

@Garland I recently gave a longer presentation on this topic and have provided a link in the resources section: PAFOW Presentation on Diversity and Inclusion. It’s a really interesting topic and aimed to include quite a few actionable approaches in that presentation.