Diversity in a team and organisation is about embracing differences and acknowledging different perspectives or points of view, experience, language, race, origin, gender, culture, education, skills.
One of my many interventions has been enabling HR team members to work as Business partners within the organisation’s verticals.
Of the many experiments that we decided upon during this intervention one was to experiment with the ‘Diversity Index’ practice from Management 3.0.
How to use the Diversity Index Practice(Reference: Management 3.0)
- Ask people to decide which diversity areas are relevant for their context.
- Get them to fill out the Diversity Index. On the left they can write down their areas of diversity.
- When the areas are filled in, ask the team to calculate the score. A point is given for each different answer. Template available at this link.
For example, in the instance that country would be an area of diversity and everyone was from the same country, they would score 1 point.
If there are four people in the group and they are all from different countries they score 4 points.
If 2 people come from country A and one from country B and another from country C, they score 3 points. - After deciding on the diversity index per area, they should write down the number on the right and calculate their total score.
- What can teams do to increase their diversity score? If there are multiple groups they can swap people from another group. Teams can also increase knowledge if the diversity area is about a specific skill.
When I introduced this practice to the HR and Business team, they immediately liked the idea. It also meant trying to experiment something to enable their own collaboration and drinking their own champagne. So, they agreed to experiment with it.
I helped tweak the template with questions to build and evolve in their context. We used questions such as
- Which generation do you belong to?
- What is the goal you want to achieve from this collaboration?
- Which country / city are you from?
- What is your current role?
- Your greatest skill?
- and a bunch of many other questions.
Given the lockdown the past 2 months, we met on zoom for a 45 minutes activity with 15 participants. I facilitated the activity with 3 breakout rooms of 5 people each.
1st Breakout Room Activity: 10 minutes
- Individually: For each question, fill out the responses.
- Group: Discuss and calculate Diversity Index for each question. 1 point for each unique answer.
Total 5 points: All 5 unique answers. For example, 5 different cities
Total 4 points: 2 people with similar response, 1 point + 3 unique responses. For example, 2 from the same city. Other 3 from different cities.
Total 1 point: All 5 same answer. For example, all belong to the same city.
And so on keep assigning points accordingly.
- Calculate the Grand Total Diversity Index by summing up for all the questions.
- Return to the main Zoom room.
Main Zoom Room Activity: 10 minutes
- Approx 1 min: Note down each Group’s Total Diversity Index numbers
- Approx 2 mins per group: Share experience with the activity
- Approx 2-3 mins: Group think how could we increase this Diversity score? And who could we move to another group and why?
Since they knew a little bit about each other now already, they quickly came up with who should be moved to which group and why that would be better.
2nd Breakout Room Activity: 10 mins
- Repeat 1st Breakout Room Activity with the new groups formed now
- Return to main Zoom room.
Main Zoom Room Activity: 10 minutes
- Approx 1 min to note down each New Group’s Total Diversity Index numbers
- Approx 2-3 mins per group to share experience with the activity
Some Voices from the team after this experiment
- One of the Business colleagues’ found it extremely relevant and quoted Sundar Pichai “A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decision and outcomes for everyone”
- To give them better insights into their discussions on recruiting for the business unit, given the varied perspectives and backgrounds
- Could even use this as an Ice-breaker activity (with shorter time box) for their other online team sessions.
- Helps see the value of the Why behind the HR and Business partnership going forward and how they could co-create valuable outcomes.
“We are building products that people that people with very diverse backgrounds use, and I think we all want our company makeup to reflect the makeup of the people who use our products” – Sheryl Sandberg