Technology Driving Authentic Measurement of DEI

This week RSquared’s CEO and Co-Founder, Dan Udoutch, met with Susan Freeman on her podcast. Together they discussed the urgency and complexity of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace.

Leading companies don’t question whether culture matters to their bottom line – they know it does. With the pandemic, people are communicating increasingly online. Add to that the fact that companies are seeing a new, more diverse set of employees in terms of age, gender and ethnicity. All these things are changing the power dynamics between employee and employer so that leaders have to answer new questions such as ‘how are people interacting?’, ‘how are they including each other?’ and ‘how collaborative are they?’. But often they rely solely on opinions, anecdotes, and surveys to get answers.

“That made it clear to us that there’s a big problem and a way for emerging technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to help solve it” according to Dan and the RSquared team. “Many people are cautious when it comes to using AI in the workplace, but don’t these human-to-human relationships deserve more attention from software developers and data scientists? The transparency and explainability enabled by AI builds trust for these models to give an additional point of view. We’re using AI to help humans, not replace them.”

Company culture is so important to business outcomes; from employee engagement to productivity, to reduced attrition and to hiring better talent. But it’s incredibly hard to measure. Dan went on to add that “we’re a platform for leaders to score the sentiments and behaviors of all employees based on their real, demonstrated collaboration or inclusion of co-workers by gender, race, age and tenure”. The implications for helping advance DEI beyond check-the-box compliance and helping organizational leaders improve how they invest in their relationship with employees are there.

Being open to and learning from new and different perspectives can bring about meaningful behavioral change. “It’s the convergence of a ‘do good, do well’ mentality with technology,” Dan pointed out, to which Susan added “you make it easier for organizations to integrate leadership and DEI”.

Hear the full conversation with Dan Udoutch on the Freeman Means Business podcast.

Learn more about RSquared’s involvement with the Executive Institute on Inclusion.