What if we could predict the future of diversity and inclusion by looking at the numbers?
Most diversity practitioners would likely have a wish list of things they would feel we could accomplish if we could predict behaviors of the people in our organizations. And given today’s robust electronic world, a vast data trail capturing people’s behavior is inevitable. A commonly used term to describe that trail is “Big Data.”
At first blush, Big Data may not seem to be the bailiwick of diversity practitioners. That’s for the IT or marketing people, we may tell ourselves. But increasingly, capturing data and being able to interpret what people and organizations are going to do next (predictive analytics) is proving itself germane to diversity and inclusion. Predictive analytics will soon offer the make-or-break evidence needed to support every business case, every new project proposal.
For diversity practitioners, predictive analytics offers more: A powerful tool to be smarter about inclusion efforts—which ones to ditch, which ones to double down on, which ones to invent.
