A diversity, equity, and inclusion survey help companies to understand how different employees feel about the organization’s work culture. A survey will allow your employees anonymously share their real feelings, experiences, and opinions regarding what they think of the company’s diversity and inclusive policies. Data gathered from these cultural diversity surveys can help companies determine how diverse, fair and inclusive the workplace is.
You can run separate DEI surveys or include survey questions about diversity, equity, and inclusion in your employee engagement surveys or pulse surveys. But it should consist of precise, actionable questions that reveal how different groups experience your workplace culture. Below are some examples of key questions to ask your workforce:
Do employees feel the workplace is comfortable to work at?
Do people with different identities feel respected and valued?
Do diverse groups of individuals have their say in policy and decision-making?
Do people view the workplace as safe and inclusive?
Are employees provided with equal opportunities to develop their skill set?
Your survey data must highlight areas for improvement by asking the correct questions, a company can learn how employees feel about the work culture, which can help improve their experience.
How to Create a DEI Survey
To create a compelling DEI survey, you must go beyond asking demographic survey questions. Understanding how safe, respected and inclusive your employees feel while working for the organization is essential.
You can follow the below-given steps to create the survey to measure how impactful diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are in your organization:
Draft the Right Questions
Include specific diversity and inclusion questions in your surveys to gather adequate feedback data. Frame the questions in a short and crisp way and leave no room for assumption. Also, try to exclude the questions that your employees view as “insensitive,” which may affect the survey response rate. You can also include a combination of open-ended questions, Likert-scale questions, multiple-choice questions, and rating-scale questions to make your surveys more engaging.
Create the DEI Survey Anonymous
Making the survey anonymous will let the employees open up. Of course, many employees will not feel comfortable sharing their genuine opinions when they know their identities are being revealed. Collecting the response anonymously will also increase the response rates of the survey. You can inform the employees about the anonymity of the survey at the beginning so they can easily fill it.
Set Clear Survey Objectives
Make sure to be specific about your corporate DEI objectives. Include diversity survey questions that match your business diversity objective. Also, transparency is the key to conducting effective DEI surveys. Always communicate with employees how their input will be beneficial in changing the DEI strategies and policies. At last, remind employees that the survey is anonymous and promise to share results with everyone.
Analyze the Result and Make Necessary Changes
Employees often feel that their input goes waste as there is no update from management regarding implementing their feedback. If you want your employees to know their opinions and feelings are appreciated, share the survey findings with them. Do inform them that steps will be taken to improve their experience.
