Developing and implementing an EDI Strategy that has been driven by evidence is an enormous feat, requiring a great deal of energy. But once the strategy has been deployed and actions implemented, how will we know what success looks like? What will tell us that our actions are making a meaningful impact? These are important questions that you should be asking from the start, and that will ensure you have the right actions in place to reach the outcomes you are seeking.

Considering how you are going to define and track the success of your EDI strategy is important. A BDC study of more than 1100 small and medium sized businesses found that the fastest growing businesses were more than 50% more likely to use three or more performance measurement metrics. Measuring and monitoring success is critical and provides information that is vital to assist in knowing where to target your efforts. Demonstrating positive changes over time and transparently communicating that throughout the organization has the added bonus of strengthening trust and improving stakeholder perceptions.

To ensure you’ll know if you’ve been successful, here are three helpful actions to incorporate into the development of your EDI Strategy.

1. Create shared outcomes: Developing an effective EDI Strategy should require bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders from varying backgrounds and roles in your organization. While vitally important, having an array of diverse stakeholders means that not everyone is going to be on the same page in envisioning what a successful EDI strategy would look like. Before jumping to actions, take time to clearly identify the desired outcomes for the work by reviewing the evidence together. Having stakeholders agree to shared outcomes creates space for solutioning while decreasing conflict on where to place efforts. And by creating clarity on the issues you are trying to solve for, you will be better positioned to choose the right indicators to measure the success of your EDI strategy. 

   One way to develop logical outcome statements is by using if-then statements to help to determine what short term outcomes are needed to reach intermediate outcomes, and then what intermediate outcomes are needed to achieve long-term outcomes. For example, if you create greater awareness of resources that are available to support employees in addressing exclusion and barriers (short-term outcome), then you should increase employees knowledge to address concerning behaviour (intermediate outcome), and if you are successful in increasing that knowledge then you should see more employees speaking up for inclusion and a reduction in exclusionary, harassing and discriminatory behaviour (long-term outcome). Identifying shared outcomes will create a logical through line to identify appropriate actions and track your progress over time, making it easier to determine success.

2. Consider leading and lagging indicators: When selecting indicators to measure your progress toward your desired outcomes, it’s important to consider that not all indicators will be positioned to track progress right away. Leading indicators are predictive measurements that often measure short term outcomes and can be tracked earlier and on a more ongoing basis. Lagging indicators on the other hand are output measurements associated with long term impacts that will help you to know if you’ve had meaningful change over time. 

   When mapping indicators to outcomes, it’s important to include a mix of both types to capture the information you need at the right time. Leading indicators will give you fast information about whether your work is moving in the right direction and will allow you to make adjustments to your actions as you roll out your strategy initiatives. Lagging indicators will take time to measure but give you a clear sign of success. Using both leading and lagging indicators will give you a robust measurement approach.

3. Establish a monitoring framework: Now that you have established shared outcomes and identified indicators, you have the foundation of your EDI Strategy Monitoring Framework. A monitoring framework clearly maps out the actions you are implementing, the desired outcomes you hope to achieve and the indicators you will use to measure them. A good monitoring framework will help you identify potential gaps in your measurement approach and the areas of focus that are most important to you. While Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are often identified in a strategy, ideally they should be chosen last, after your measurement framework has been developed and a suite of indicators are in place to fully depict whether an outcome has been achieved. KPIs should be a balance of both leading and lagging indicators that will provide timely information to enable evidence informed decision-making.  

   Considering and incorporating these actions proactively into the development of your EDI Strategy will mean you can adequately convey the impact your initiatives are having. This information becomes powerful knowledge that will give you the ability to pivot with real time information, amplifying impactful actions, dampening actions that are not moving the needle and reallocating resources as appropriate. 

So how will you know if your EDI Strategy worked? The truth is, you shouldn’t wait until the end of your strategy to figure that out. Establishing a strong measurement and monitoring approach from the start will allow you to keep your pulse on success from the beginning of your work all the way through to the finish line.