Radical actions – A shift to evidence-based decision making for people

Companies consist of people and products, yet few firms apply even a fraction of the methodical diligence to their people decisions as they do to developing, launching and maintaining their products and services. People decisions – even the most important ones – often boil down to an individual and their gut instinct. In our forthcoming research from our Radical Actions series of ideas that could radically shift diversity outcomes, we advocate a shift towards an increasingly evidence-based process for making people decisions.

At this breakfast roundtable, we will discuss the early signs we see from organisations seeking to inject greater rigour, accountability and time into their systems, processes and policies underpinning people-related decisions, in order to improve diversity.

Examples include instigating a “comply or explain” approach to hitting targets, introducing a principle of gender-proportionality, and other kinds of prompts that compel managers to consider the impact of their proposed decisions. These approaches also prevent managers from using common excuses to explain why women and those of diverse backgrounds fail to progress, such as lack of “fit/confidence/polish/gravitas”.

This event is likely to be attended by people working in a range of job titles across D&I and HR, and from the business side those with accountability for D&I or diversity leads/champions