Lean into DEI by Measuring Inclusion with iNPS

DEI is at a crossroads. 

In the summer of 2020, when Black Lives Matter became a global movement, there was a flurry of activity and a strong push for organizations to not only invest more in DEI but also take action and show results. Fast-forward four years, and the political and economic landscapes are very different than they were in 2020.

In the tech industry, economic headwinds from 2023 have carried over into 2024, and as a result, we’ve seen less tech spending and more layoffs. With budgets tightening and external sociopolitical backlash, DEI teams at even the biggest companies in the industry have faced cuts. There’s also been a noticeable drop in DEI-related job postings and DEI programs. By mid-2023, DEI-related job postings had declined 44% from the same time a year prior, according to data from Indeed.

At this moment, we’re seeing the pendulum swing away from DEI. But if there’s one thing I know for certain about the corporate world, it’s that everything is cyclical. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, I expect the pendulum to swing back toward DEI. 

While it’s my belief that increasing DEI is the right thing to do regardless, it would also behoove employers to put themselves ahead of the pack by thinking about DEI as a long-term investment in employee engagement, employer branding, and workplace culture. 

Measuring DEI's impact

Naturally, any investment must be able to show results. That’s why the most important thing leaders can do to ensure continued investment and engagement in DEI is to establish metrics and tie DEI to company performance. However, when it comes to metrics and the three pillars of DEI, one pillar is more challenging than the others to measure — inclusion. 

Last month, in an article for Forbes, I talked about why inclusion is the most challenging of the three DEI pillars to measure. 

Measuring diversity is fairly straightforward since it involves pulling objective demographic data, e.g., who identifies as BIPOC, what percentage of your managers are women, etc. Measuring equity is also relatively straightforward since it involves analyzing compensation information that is already available, such as the pay of males vs. females in the same role. 

Inclusion, on the other hand, is harder to measure because it’s effectively about sentiment, emotions, feelings, and attitudes.

Creating and implementing iNPS

Here at G2, we've been measuring our employee net promoter score (eNPS) quarterly since August 2018. However, after a few quarters of collecting eNPS metrics, our employee success team felt that there was a gap in our data. An important aspect of the employee experience wasn’t being captured or measured through eNPS. We were failing to measure inclusion. It was also at this time that G2 was looking to further its diversity and inclusion efforts overall.  

The simplicity and adaptability of NPS inspired us to think about how we could use it to help fill this particular gap in our employee engagement data collection. With the desire to measure inclusion in the same way we measure engagement, the team discussed the matter with diversity and inclusion expert Fern Mandelbaum from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Could we implement the same methodology of eNPS by asking our employees once a quarter about inclusion? If the method measures one aspect of the employee experience, why not another? We came to the conclusion that defining the question would be key to capturing workplace inclusiveness. 

After much discussion with Fern, we crafted a question that includes the most important tenets of inclusivity: “I feel comfortable being myself at work, even when I’m different from others.“ With this question, we launched our first Inclusion Net Promoter Score (iNPS) pulse survey in November 2019. 

How iNPS works

The implementation and measurement of iNPS are identical to those of eNPS. Employees are asked to respond to the question, “I feel comfortable being myself at work, even when I’m different from others.” with a score of 0 (the lowest) to 10 (the highest). The calculation is the same as well. Like eNPS, scores of 0 to 6 are considered detractors, and 9 and 10 are promoters. Scores of 7 and 8 are passives, neither detractors nor promoters, and thus do not impact the score. 

Our iNPS scale is similar to our eNPS scale: a score in the 30s is good, 40s is great, and 50+ is aspirational. 

We now send this question to all G2ers once each quarter, along with our eNPS question. Doing so allows us to do quick pulse checks throughout the year on both engagement and inclusion simultaneously. It also provides insight into whether inclusion impacts engagement or vice versa. It is probably not a surprise that after nearly five years of data, we’ve found that there is a positive correlation between engagement and inclusion. 

Another important lesson from implementing iNPS here at G2 is that inclusion should not be used as the only metric to assess overall DEI initiatives. It must be considered and weighed alongside diversity and demographic data, as well as compensation and job leveling data, for a holistic perspective of DEI work. That is why iNPS is just one of many measures we use to gauge our DEI efforts. 

Using iNPS to boost DEI efforts

Despite reported cuts to DEI, there are signs it is still growing and making inroads. According to a recent survey from labor and employment law firm Littler, 57% of C-suite executives in the U.S. said they’ve grown their diversity commitments over the past 12 months despite feeling backlash toward corporate diversity programs and initiatives. 

Two examples of organizations and leaders doing just this are also notable names in the SaaS industry: BetterCloud and Lattice. Both BetterCloud and Lattice are intentionally leaning into DEI and are now also implementing iNPS to help measure and drive their efforts. 

Example #1: BetterCloud

Alyxa Lease is the Chief People Officer at BetterCloud and a market leader in SaaS operations management. When she heard about iNPS, she was excited to roll it out for her organization. Alyxa felt iNPS could help her team dig a layer deeper into the employee experience to examine how employees engage across relational dynamics within their day-to-day work.

“Giving voice to silence and encouraging dissent is one of our priorities. Therefore, employees feeling comfortable being themselves is critical so that we can advance the business through candor and employees being willing to engage honestly and authentically. iNPS is enabling us to measure this and be intentional about ways to empower each employee to make an impact on the business.”  

BetterCloud rolled out iNPS earlier this year as part of their quarterly employee engagement surveys. Alyxa and her team now have an annual goal of maintaining a score of 59 and will create quarterly initiatives to address feedback they receive from the survey. 

Alyxa shared that it has already helped identify cohorts of employees to focus on. She added, “In our first quarter running the survey, we received some lower scores from female-identifying employees, and that enabled us to create initiatives specifically tailored to engaging with our women of BetterCloud ERG and bringing speakers in to support equality and educate our teams on diversity in the workspace.”

Example #2: Lattice

Maurice Tuiasosopo Bell is the Senior Director of DEIB and People Analytics at Lattice, a leading performance review, employee engagement, and career growth management platform. Over at Lattice, they are experts in engagement, so it was exciting to hear their enthusiasm for iNPS. Maurice shared that it’s the way iNPS differentiates belonging from engagement that appeals most to them.

“While they are related and both have an important relationship in supporting the overall employee experience, they can also have very different drivers that reflect unique needs. Engagement is often influenced by someone's relationship with their work, which includes very tangible operational factors — job duties, compensation, performance, etc. But belonging tends to be influenced more by intangible factors — values alignment, community/social dynamics, norms, etc. The latter has always been difficult to measure, but iNPS is solving that.”

Maurice also shared that Lattice has always included a belonging question in their engagement survey, but last year, they redesigned their survey based on results from a factor analysis and evolved the design to include a belonging theme made up of three questions. They are working on creating more alignment across surveys that capture insights on the employee experience across key moments in their journey, e.g., onboarding, reviews, engagement, growth, and exits, and are looking to iNPS to support that alignment.

Talking about the initiative, Maurice further explained, “We are exploring how we can utilize iNPS as an anchor metric that will help us understand how our experience helps to support or detract from feelings of belonging, and in particular, we want to understand how the sequence of these moments can enable or detract from business outcomes like performance, attrition, etc.”

Inclusion is key

For G2, BetterCloud, and Lattice, it's clear iNPS has the potential to be an effective and useful tool for measuring inclusivity, helping create more actionable DEI plans and strategies. I hope that sharing how iNPS is being used today and how simple it is to implement will inspire other employers to lean more into DEI. 

Studies have consistently shown that engaging and supportive workplaces perform better, so although it may feel challenging now, the long-term investment in building inclusivity and belonging will undoubtedly pay off. 

The tech industry is ever-changing, and so are the needs of your employees. Find out how to keep employees engaged even when times are tough.