How do you transform diverse populations into connected communities?
When a global consumer products and retail company wanted to undertake qualitative and quantitative diversity and inclusion (D&I) research to drive systematic cultural change, they turned to EY for help.
This global organization had a new Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), and the management team set a vision for a new D&I ambition. They wanted to expand their remit to include gender diversity, LGBTQ, disability and generational considerations. The leadership team wanted to build an organizational environment that would foster a more inclusive leadership and culture, address key barriers to inclusion, and build a road map that would translate these new insights into tangible action.
To make this happen, the client needed help capturing the perceptions of their employees across all functions and geographies. The program aimed at leveraging these perceptions to create a vibrant community of D&I advocates across the organization.
Listening with intent to build actionable insights
To solve the client specific needs, EY quickly assembled a global, cross-functional team, which included researchers, user experience (UX) designers, D&I subject-matter resources, community engagement builders, copywriters and analysts. EY professionals conducted leadership interviews with key stakeholders, including the global executive committee and inclusion board members, to understand the current state and their ambition. As part of the program, the EY team also helped the client assess their policies and processes against those set forth in the EY National Equality Standards (NES).1
Within weeks, the EY team had deployed a company-branded, dedicated platform to engage the company’s employees across Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific in discussions and targeted focus groups. Built using EY MillionYou, the platform acted as a D&I hub to capture insights and ideas, as well as to connect people and resources. This employee experience was tailored based on the user’s location (using single sign-on) and included:
- Establishing key program principles to understand employee motivations through personas and by identifying key distinguishing factors across company locations
- Following high security standards in accordance with the client’s privacy and legal expectations
- Designing the platform in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese
- Designing a communications and engagement plan across all internal channels, working in conjunction with the organization’s communications team
- Activating a network of D&I moderators (EY subject-matter resources) to match key geographical locations and drive conversations while allowing an objective, outside view
- Catering for engagement both synchronous (facilitated and moderator-led focus groups with voluntary participation at different times) and asynchronous (virtual discussions combined with polls and surveys)
- Synthesizing qualitative and quantitative results to define KPIs across various aspects of the organization’s D&I initiatives
A roadmap for human-centric organization wide change
Our approach allowed the company to re-imagine their D&I strategy in a way that factored in different levels of D&I maturity across locations and cultures. By leveraging EY’s experience in D&I program strategy and change management, we helped the organization redefine its culture.
Highlights included:
- Providing a comprehensive perspective on what it takes to change organizational culture
- Informing the new and widely accepted D&I strategy with key insights, recommendations, themes and employee sentiment
- Harnessing human-centered technology to reach employees from HQs to factory floors
- Helping generate more than 1,500 employee contributions from across the organization
Connecting all employees on a single platform meant that the client could monitor real-time progress of the employee listening program, thus allowing leadership to stay informed and adapt the program as needed. EY could then design the next sets of actions considering live data and employee feedback, which were reported on weekly and daily depending on the phases of the project.
Having experienced the power of human-centric technology firsthand, the client is planning to use the EY MillionYou platform to further capture the voice of the employee, as they continue their D&I transformation journey.
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