Data is critical for progressing equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) goals. Transparency and accountability are both foundational for improving EDI and these cannot be achieved without data regarding both employee characteristics and workplace outcomes. While gender pay gap reporting has been shown to reduce gender inequality, many organisations in the UK are not able to accurately calculate their pay gaps for wider characteristics such as race & ethnicity, disability, sexuality or socioeconomic status, due to poor data coverage.
We worked with the recruitment platform Applied, which aims to remove bias from the hiring process, to understand what works to increase voluntary disclosure, particularly for sexual orientation.