12 DEI Metrics You Need to Track in 2024 For a Culture of Belonging in Your Workplace

If your business values inclusivity in the workplace, DEI metrics are about to become your best friend.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion aren’t passing trends – they’re facts of life. The world is a diverse place filled with people from all experiences and identities, and workplaces should reflect that.

But to achieve this utopian ideal, you’ll need the nuts and bolts to execute a successful DEI strategy.

That’s where DEI metrics come in.

In this article, we’ll define key DEI metrics and explain how you can set and analyze them to create a culture of belonging in your workplace.

What Are DEI Metrics?

DEI metrics are a measurement system for diversity, equity, and inclusion in your workplace.

Metrics for DEI include quantitative data like hiring rates and qualitative data like employee sentiment. These metrics help you measure your progress toward DEI goals, look for problem areas, prove your successes, and develop improvement strategies.

Take a look at our Oleeo Diversity Insights datasheet for a deeper understanding of DEI metrics.

Why Do DEI Metrics Matter?

DEI metrics matter to both business operations and workplace culture. Ideas are a good start, but they’re meaningless without guidance. DEI metrics give your business a measurable, actionable set of instructions and data to help prioritize, monitor, and improve DEI practices.

Here are some of the benefits of DEI metrics:

1. Accountability

Goals and metrics to measure their progress keep your business accountable. Tracking a metric proves a company-wide commitment to DEI, and holding your company to those metrics keeps decision-makers accountable for getting results.

2. Informed decision-making

Without information, it’s impossible to make informed decisions. DEI success metrics offer that information, measuring and providing important insights for decision-makers.

3. Transparency

Trust is an important part of workplace culture. PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey showed that a lack of trust in a business negatively impacted employees, customers, and investors.

Executives cited that trust levels impacted things like productivity, quality, efficiency, and profitability. Customer trust was also at stake, with the belief that customer trust in a company impacted engagement levels.

Trust can be earned through accountability and transparency. A company with transparent DEI metrics openly proves its commitment to better workplace inclusivity.

4. Improvement

Time and time again, DEI strategies have proven themselves valuable to business operations.

The 2023 “A Mature Approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” report by Enterprise Strategy Group and AWS proves the value of both DEI initiatives and DEI metrics.

It studied companies’ maturity of DEI strategies on a scale of leading, evolving, emerging, and nascent. The report measures maturity as how well a business communicates, builds on, defines, and measures its DEI program.

The report showed that leading companies were more successful at hitting revenue targets, beating their competitors to market, and engaging employees than their competitors. Emerging and evolving companies followed their leading competitors in these positive outcomes.

Improvements across this scale show how developing DEI strategies pays off over time. Measuring DEI metrics allows you to monitor and assess progress and make improvements that help you achieve your DEI goals.

12 Key DEI Metrics to Track For an Inclusive Workplace

Defining and measuring your DEI metrics can be overwhelming, but we’re here to help.

Let’s examine some DEI metrics examples. These are the most important metrics you should measure:

Diversity metrics

1. Hiring rates

DEI recruitment metrics include the number of applicants, interviews, and hires from diverse groups.

Diversity begins at the front door, so these metrics can tell you a lot about your recruitment and onboarding process and help you develop Blind Recruitment strategies for fairer hiring.

2. Representation

This metric measures the makeup of your workforce at every level, from new hires to leadership roles. You can look at the population at large to determine if your company has strong representation among different groups.

3. Promotion rates

Representation is important at every level. Understanding the makeup of your workforce allows you to measure which groups are getting promoted above others.

Promotions should be equal across the board. If one group is consistently promoted over others, your decision-makers might be biased.

4. Retention rates

If diverse groups are leaving or being let go at higher rates than non-diverse groups, your workplace might be discriminatory or inaccessible.

Equity metrics

5. Pay equity

Pay equity is easy to measure and shows how much your company values each employee.

6. Opportunity equity

Opportunity isn’t as easy to measure.

Looking at promotion rates among diverse groups can help. You can also examine training programs to assess the makeup of participants.

Employee surveys can help you assess sentiment regarding opportunities.

7. Performance evaluation equity

Look at performance reviews across each group in your workforce. If reviews are weighted exclusively against diverse groups, your performance evaluation process might contain biases.

Inclusion metrics

8. Employee engagement

Engagement can be measured through surveys, interviews, and informal chats.

You can also look at absentee patterns – employees who take a lot of time off or don’t show up. High levels of absenteeism in certain groups can indicate a hostile work environment, high levels of stress, or a lack of accessibility.

9. Sense of belonging

Measuring a sense of belonging is complicated but can tell you so much about the sentiment of diverse groups in your workforce. Employee surveys and interviews are the best approach.

10. Participation

Employees who feel excluded or disengaged are less likely to participate in work or informal activities.

Resources spent on DEI

11. Budget allocation

Budget allocation metrics include how much your company spends on diverse recruitment, DEI mentorship programs, employee support, and reshaping internal policies and operations to be more inclusive.

12. Mentorship programs

Mentorship programs are an important part of DEI Initiatives, so the amount of programs running at your business is a good DEI metric.

How to Implement DEI Metrics

Implementing a DEI metrics dashboard involves collecting and utilizing data to set goals and take action. 

Here are the steps you’ll need to take:

1. Data collection

You’ll need to collect data to measure DEI metrics. This includes quantitative data like employee demographics, retention, and pay equality, as well as qualitative data such as employee sentiment and engagement.

We’ll go into more detail about how you can collect this data in the section below.

2. Set goals

Defining your DEI goals allows you to choose which metrics apply to your situation. This works for both tangible goals like hiring more diverse employees to less tangible goals like improving overall workplace inclusivity.

3. Regular reporting

To properly utilize DEI metrics, set up a schedule for regular data reporting. This way, you’ll always have up-to-date information.

4. Action plans

An action plan represents a company-wide commitment to DEI. Leadership and decision-makers should create and publicize a DEI action plan for transparency, accountability, and ongoing improvement.

How to collect DEI metrics

You can collect DEI metric data in several ways.

• Employee surveys

Surveys help you analyze how employees feel on an individual level, which allows you to find patterns in employee sentiment. 

Metrics for DEI include personal feelings about workplace culture, inclusivity, accessibility, and engagement. You can tailor surveys to the data you’re trying to gather.

• HR systems and records

Records contain quantitative data, such as representation in your current workforce, pay equity, and diversity in recruitment, training, and promotion rates. 

HR systems also hold qualitative data like engagement levels and performance reviews.

• Diversity audits

Diversity audits analyze your chosen DEI metrics to find successes and failures.

• Performance reviews

Performance reviews offer insights into employee engagement, sentiment, and productivity. 

• Pay audits

Pay equity is vital to DEI. Pay audits conduct a deep dive into pay inequality across all the groups in your workforce and how to address it.

How often should DEI metrics be reviewed?

Reviewing your DEI KPI metrics is important as your business grows and changes. As your DEI improves, and as the concept of DEI evolves,  you’ll want to create new metrics and goals.

Annual reviews are a good start. However, ongoing and rapidly evolving metrics, such as recruitment, might require more regular attention.

Challenges in Tracking DEI Metrics

Every strategy has its challenges, and DEI metrics are no different. Here are some of the most common:

Lack of leadership support

If leadership is reluctant to commit to DEI, you might not get support for tracking DEI metrics. Gartner’s 2023 HR survey showed that 51% of leadership failed to take responsibility for DEI outcomes.

It’s difficult to drive meaningful change without the support of key decision-makers and the budget and resources to allow it.

You can tackle this in a few ways:

• Use research to prove how DEI can benefit your business operations, such as through better innovation and increased revenue
• Prove how tracking DEI metrics is vital to improving DEI to achieve those benefits
• Find cost-effective ways to implement DEI and metric tracking, such as encouraging one-on-one mentorships and surveying the results with an informal chat
• Using incremental improvements of cost-effective solutions further to prove the benefits of DEI and metric tracking

Reluctance in the workplace

Some people are set in their ways, and it can be difficult to change long-standing opinions.

Tragically, diversity is often derided. A workplace hostile to progress can impede DEI.

Tackling this requires changing the culture of your workplace – hiring more diverse talent, placing diverse employees in leadership roles, and creating inclusive policies and programs.

To do this, you need the transparency and accountability DEI metrics bring. This data proves the positive effects of change, which can help turn the tide of reluctance. 

What Tools Can Help Track DEI Metrics?

Utilizing automation for tracking DEI metrics can streamline data collection and analysis.

Here are the DEI metrics tools to look out for:

Applicant tracking system (ATS)

Job postings often get hundreds of applicants, and an ATS can help you sort through them. An ATS scans applications for certain keywords and phrases, creating a shortlist of the most suitable candidates. 

They often eliminate recruiter biases. One example is Oleeo’s success in creating more diversity in the British Transport Police.

Oleeo’s Diversity Recruiting Software helped the BPT double the number of successful female and minority applicants by utilizing data, analytics, and DEI metric tracking to remove personal biases from the recruitment process.

Human resource information systems (HRIS)

HRIS tools store and manage employee data. They can be used to track workplace representation, employee survey results, pay equity, and performance review data.

Employee engagement survey platforms

We talked about the importance of employee surveys in assessing sentiment and inclusivity. 

Engagement survey platforms can help you develop more effective surveys, create schedules, distribute surveys, anonymize personal data, and analyze results. 

DEI analytics software

Unlike the above tools, DEI analytics software is specifically developed to track DEI metrics. They monitor things like diversity in recruitment and workforce demographics, with analysis that helps you spot problem areas and make improvements.

Foster Inclusivity With Diversity Recruiting Software

Fostering DEI in the workplace starts at the recruitment stage. 

Often, our biases blind us to the best candidate for the job. Candidates you might never have considered can bring innovation, creativity, and a new way of thinking to your business.

Oleeo’s Diversity Recruiting Software helps eliminate bias in hiring and showcases candidates with unique experiences and fresh perspectives. 

If you want to hire the best talent, book a consultation for a 30-minute chat and Request A Demo tailored to your recruitment needs.

FAQs About DEI Metrics

Do DEI metrics promote accountability?

Yes. Setting and tracking DEI metrics creates responsibility amongst decision-makers to achieve DEI goals. 

How can DEI metrics be communicated effectively?

DEI values accountability and transparency. To foster this culture of responsibility, DEI metrics should be communicated with employees, stakeholders, and customers. 

You can create an annual DEI report, share successes such as awards through press releases and social media, and be public with your DEI goals to ensure everyone is working towards reaching them.

How can DEI metrics help with recruitment?

If you lack diverse talent, DEI metrics such as demographic data can help you find areas for improvement.

To recruit more diverse employees, you’ll need to create inclusive job postings and eliminate personal biases in hiring. 

Diversity Recruiting Metrics such as applicant, interviewee, and hiring demographics can help you find flaws in your job postings and encourage recruiters to look past their biases.

How do DEI metrics relate to company culture?

A homogenous company hostile to anyone different is not an inclusive workplace. 

Every DEI metric matters in creating an inclusive company culture, from employee sentiment to pay equity to recruitment to promotion. 

Representation matters, and diversity at every level of your business encourages empathy, acceptance, and trust. A workplace culture where people’s differences are respected and encouraged allows unique minds to flourish and the free exchange of ideas to flow.