At the first PRCA EIAC Conference in September this year, Kantar launched its 2022 Inclusion Index. The Inclusion Index covers 24 industries across 14 countries and 18000 respondents. For Kantar a key purpose of the report, is to enable organisations to understand, measure and track and their own progress in developing an inclusive workplaces. Interestingly, there is data from key markets and geographies - so it is easier to figure out progress or lack of in markets. 

A shocking but not surprising finding is that DEI progress has stalled. Does this mean that the rhetoric by organisations on equity & inclusion does not match action? From my conversations in the UK, Middle-East and India, I hear the word fatigue a lot during conversations on DEI. What is clear from the report, however, is that employees, customers and clients are noticing the push on DEI but that is not enough with shifting employee expectations and businesses have to work harder to reach the new bar. 

According to the report,” Employees want businesses to go beyond DEI campaigns and cultural days. They want to see a stronger focus on driving systemic change.” 

To understand the data and insights better, I spoke with Nadach Musungu, Inclusion Lead at Kantar and Abhijeet Roy, Senior Growth Leader at Kantar in this episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast. 

We started with a conversation on Nadach’s career and journey so far 

👉🏾 Her learnings from leading on D&I at big organisations

👉🏾 The Kantar Inclusion Index and the purpose of it

👉🏾 Key insights from the report

👉🏾 The Global engagement gap

👉🏾 Industries performing well

👉🏾 The differences based on geographies? 

👉🏾 The need for Cultural intelligence

👉🏾 Why organisations struggle with inclusion

👉🏾 The drivers for inclusion and belonging in an organisation

And the three things she would prioritise on. Thank you Nadach and Abhijeet for this conversation 

“The fact remains that for minority groups, experience in the workplace is measurably poorer, driven by a lack of sense of belonging, experience of discrimination and presence of negative behaviours” Kantar Inclusion Index 2022

Memorable passages from the podcast: 

👉🏾Thank you for having me. 

👉🏾 Thank you for having me as well. 

👉🏾 So I started my career in market research, and this was purely accidental. I was doing my masters and I was looking to make some money to support me because I was cut off from the bank of mum and dad. And yeah, I fell into market research and I enjoyed it and things kind of evolved and picked up from there.

👉🏾 It was a very interesting space, I worked in various consult consultancies and I worked for various companies in-house. And I was typically the only a black woman, which was to be expected in a way. Not saying that I was kind of not thinking about it, it did have an impact on me, but I numbed myself to the experience. So I just knew that when I go into an organisation it'll only be me within the team or within the entire organisation. And it kind of reminded me of my just general experience in schools, of being the only person but kind of thinking it to be normal. And thinking that that would be the typical experience as well for any ethnic minority. 

👉🏾 And when I was thinking about my journey and thinking about how that had an impact on me developing, I kind of had to mimic and shadow other people try to fit in. I didn't want to stick out too much. Even though I loved so much about me and my personality, my uniqueness, and my culture, because I felt like I didn't fit in. I found myself a lot trying to kind of null myself out, or blend in the background and that kind of dulled a lot of my magic. And a lot of my interests or the things that I thought like would've been a valuable asset to an organisation or within a school

👉🏾 And it was only until after I graduated from my masters is when I decided to make the conscious effort to liberate myself from those shackles. And I don't actually know how I did that or what I did, but I just thought, you know what? I am me and I'm gonna be confident in it. And I took big risk in doing that.

👉🏾 And I just felt that my confidence grew, I was more vocal in meetings. I was a little bit more aggressive with my career in terms of the direction that I wanted it to go and the kind of progress that I wanted to see, and it all came from me kind of owning who I was and accepting my difference instead of fitting into the background.

👉🏾 I think the biggest learning for me is how challenging it is for an organisation to step out of fear or their status quo and step into action. On the outside employees, consumers, the audience may think, you know, why can't this organisation just go about and be diverse or just do an inspiring DEI initiative. And my experience has shown me that there are so many complex blocks working behind the scenes. And it involves senior stakeholders, allies, DEI change agents, data, budget it involves all these very complex factors to come together and to align. And then that's where you get to point of action. And at Kantar, having understood that this is actually a very complex process in the back end to get to the action point. And at Kantar, I've been really inspired in making that process easier for clients by harnessing the power of data, by using data to their advantage. Because I know from my experience when I was the client, how difficult it is to get that budget, to get all these different components to come together. And sometimes data, having that as your best friend can help you push things forward. So I feel like that is probably the biggest challenge. And for people who kind of watch on the outside, they think that this happens at the drop of a hat, but in practice it's far more complicated than that.

👉🏾 So the inclusion index was designed to help organisations understand, measure and track their inclusion performance. And by being able to track it and understand how inclusive you are, they were able to see how they are moving on their D&I journey. So see exactly where they are and then kind of create an action plan or a strategy that helps them to move along. And by benchmarking their inclusion performance, it gives them a real sense of what good looks like. So sometimes when you are so focused on your own business, you might feel like, yes, we're really inclusive, but when you are benchmarking against your industry and also against your market, you might start learning and seeing that we're not that inclusive and we've got ways to go.

👉🏾 So that was the whole purpose of it, and it was to really bring about a system of measuring inclusion, because diversity, it's easy to measure and a lot of organisations have come up with a system that allows them to track and measure how diverse they are, although it can still be difficult to kind of collect that data.

👉🏾 But inclusion is slightly more complex and it's something that organisations are not measuring in a standardised way. And we wanted to come in and come up with a formula that allows organisations to measure their inclusion performance and really understand the inclusion experience for employees. And for us if you start with inclusion, then that will impact your diversity numbers because if you are inclusive, truly inclusive, and your company is great for its sense of belonging and there isn't that much discrimination or negative behaviour, it will have a positive impact on your diversity numbers. 

👉🏾 Yeah, you mentioned a valid point. D&I is a massive topic and includes so many different components and it's forever evolving. So sometimes when you've got it or you understand it in one area, then that quickly changes. And what we wanted to is kind of drill into this inclusion piece because again we felt like there is not enough attention in understanding the inclusion experience of employees, and we wanted to do that in a standardised way that can be made easy to track and measure and do on a yearly basis.

👉🏾 So we kind of came up with a formula where we looked at the company sense of belonging, the absence of discrimination and the presence of negative behaviour, and we broke the index in these three key areas focusing on looking at how employees feel when it comes to their sense of belonging, and then looking at where there is that discrimination and then the presence of negative behaviour. And all of this focuses on the employee experiences, which was really important to us. The fact that we can actually have such a survey that opens up and focuses on employee experience means that we can look at across many of the protected characteristics, so it's not just tailored to disability or tailored to ethnicity, it's got the range to kind of embody all these other protected characteristics. So that was really the main thinking behind what we would include in the survey.

👉🏾 So I mentioned this at the event and it was quite shocking, it's that really DEI progress has stalled. So we ran the inclusion index in 2018. And measured, what was going on in 2022 to kind of see whether we're growing, whether we're moving forward and we heard all the pledges and we heard business make promises. And after George Floyd's tragedy that kind of ramped up a lot of the DEI conversation. So we wanted to measure and see what is the state of DE & I. And unfortunately, our data shows that the progress has stalled. And that in fact some of the big markets that we have within our benchmark have actually dropped in inclusion score. And there's also other markets that have grown as well and that have really ramped up their inclusion efforts and they're more inclusive. But yes, we kind of see these big discrepancies within market and within industries. But when we speak about that, it can be kind of disheartening and shocking as well. But what we learn is that the fact is the expectations have actually increased. 

👉🏾 So in 2018, where it may have been okay or good enough to just talk about, DEI initiatives or training sessions or cultural days or awareness, on the topic. In 2022 employees want to see more, they actually want to see organisations step into systemic change, step into action. So it's not that nobody cares about DE & I, and that's why the stalling is actually that the bar has been risen and now organisations need to focus more on being actioned and to drive their DEI agenda forward. 

👉🏾 Yeah, the conversation is still going and the reality is when we look at our data, we're still dealing with those hard truths. So for instance, with disability one and two, who identify as disabled feel that opportunities to progress have been restricted by senior colleagues. And even for gender, almost half of the women in our study report people taking sole credit for shared effort. So we are still seeing that minority groups experience, poorer lived experiences in the workplace, but it's now this focus on that systemic change, how do we still tackle these issues and decrease these numbers by focusing on systemic change? 

👉🏾 Yeah, so the global engagement gap kind of teases on the systemic change that I spoke about. And what we're seeing, is this gap between diversity and then the inclusion. So yes there may be diversity within an organisation and organisations are attracting more talent, but then there is this gap in terms of making sure that they are inclusive and that also helps them to retain talent actually and to develop them.

👉🏾 So that is something that we will seeing and employees actually flagged that they recognise that their organisation is being diverse and inclusive. I think 71% of employees said that they believe that their organisation, actively taking steps to be more diverse and inclusive and about 46% said that they personally benefited from DEI in their organisation. But then the engagement gap is that they still believe that their company could do more to be diverse and inclusive. And some employees actually flagged and said that they would like to see more diversity in C-suite positions, they would like to see closer monitoring of inclusion and diversity linked to their performance. So this is where the engagement gap is coming in, so we know employees can see that their organisation is doing stuff around year DE & I, but actually how is it being executed and is it engaging with all the protected characteristics? 

👉🏾 Yes. So just to kind of back up what Nadach is saying, this is very akin to what we seen consumer behaviour.

👉🏾 You know, the difference between what people think and how people act or what people do. So it's a very similar situation where companies are thinking of certain actions or certain programs, but when it actually comes to doing it it's quite different because it's all about behaviour thereafter. So Nadach was pointing out, once you recruit the kind of diverse talent coming in, into the organisation, how do you treat them, how do people behave with them? How do they feel as part of the organisational culture? So is there any work being done there and from what we are seeing here is that might be a gap at that place in terms of people feel that they belong to that organisation, which is why the actual aspect of belonging is not really playing out that well, despite them being attracted to that company upfront.

👉🏾 Yeah. In our inclusion index, our benchmark study reveals that the professional services are leading the score when it comes to inclusive industries.

👉🏾 Our global average for the inclusion index is at 55% and the professional services is about at 64%, so they are over indexing. And then you also have the charity non-for-profit following right behind and professional services. Some of the industries where there is lots of growth that is needed is the entertainment industry, security and defence industry as well, where we can see that there needs to be a little bit more growth. And in the PR and marketing industry, we rank about 15 out of the 25. So again indicating that there is this inclusion gap for us to really address and, and focus. 

👉🏾 Yes, there are, we can actually see that 8 of the 10 markets we examined in 2018 have dropped in their inclusion score. So when we are looking at their score from 2018, for instance, in Canada they were at 66% with the inclusion score and then in 2022 they dropped to 57% and some other big markets as well, like the US see similar patterns. They were at 66% and they dropped to 56% as well. And then you also have markets such as Mexico, which you know has some challenges around certain areas of DEI, there are some challenges there culturally. And in 2018 they were at 43%, and in 2022 they've risen to 58%. So you've got some markets that have shown some real growth as well and then others where there is a bit of a lag. In the UK there's been no shift. So we were at 56% in 2018 and we're at 56% in 2022.

👉🏾 No, I think all the markets they have their nuances and they have different tensions. So the events or the issues that are affecting, for instance, Mexico or the US, are going to be very different to what's going on in the us even with DE & I. And in the UK it's not that DE & I is not an important topic anymore, or everybody's decided to rest their laurels. It's again this prospects that we are anticipating that this systemic change. DEI is a topic in the UK that is more developed in other markets, so a lot of people have heard about it enough they understand it a lot of organisations are talking about it and being bold in the conversation. But now the gap is, okay, how do we get to that systemic change? How do we implement changes that actually drive impact when it comes to representation?

👉🏾 Representation at C-suite and senior level, also pay gap, how do we address that ethnicity pay gap as well. So these are all these kind of systemic and structural change that people are going to be more interested in, and keen to see in the developed markets where DEI has really evolved and where markets where they're at, I guess, the earliest stage of the conversation.

They'll see growth relating to their kind of area, so maybe growth on gender and or growth around LGBTQ plus the conversation in that area picking up. So I wouldn't look at the markets like for like, just because they are all nuanced and they are very, very different. 

👉🏾 Yeah, I think it's so important understanding these market sensitivities because again, when you are trying to collect data and you're trying to understand your workforce, you don't want to put them in danger.

👉🏾 So questions around sexuality in certain markets that it's a crime. You don't want to explore that or even kind of endanger or put your employees at risk by looking into that. And then there also those cultural influences that will impact where it can be accepted, it can be a legal question to ask, but culturally it's frowned upon so nobody will share.

👉🏾 And I think it's something that when you are looking at different markets, you have to consider and you have to make sure that you've got your eye or your finger on the pulse on that. When you are looking at DE & I, and you're looking at it in different markets, I think it's so important to allow those local markets to have their voices and to make sure that you are talking about their nuances. Because what happens sometimes is when we're focused on the bigger markets or maybe the western markets, that sometimes washes out all the different nuances and all the uniqueness in other markets when we're looking at DEI. And it's so important that those are highlighted to make sure that strategies or action plans are relevant to the market. So anywhere possible. I always think that it's important to look at that and to consider those nuances and those sensitivities. 

👉🏾 I think the big struggle with inclusion is the fact that it is difficult to measure or organisations DE & I, leads haven't got into a system of measuring it in a very systematic way. So we are all comfortable with diversity numbers and it's easy to build representation targets around that. But actually when it comes to...