Why I'm co-founding Included -Demand for DEI

I’ve watched with great interest as the equity and inclusion frameworks from the first half of my career in civil society have made their way steadily into enterprise. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) program growth is outpacing other parts of the business, in fact Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) were the fastest growing C-suite role in 2020 --outpacing peer roles by 84%. 

The high demand for DEI is coming from within as well as without: from each company’s workforce as well as from each brand’s consumer base.

Co-founding Included is a culmination of my career and passions to date.

I’m not surprised at the speed with which companies are adopting DEI practices or the demand that drives it. The simple fact is that DEI best practices represent a once-in-a-generation revolution in what we call employee engagement. 

Though I now coach across the C-suite portfolio, at the start of my career coaching practice I specialized in mid career and younger, high potential clients.

I spent years coaching women, queer folks, Black and BIPOC professionals, ESL professionals, and people of an array of nationalities who were trying their hardest to grow their careers in big, matrixed organizations. A common thread through their experiences was this: if they did not magically figure out how to advocate for themselves, they would slip through the cracks.

When you center the belonging, inclusion and equity experiences of underrepresented minorities (URM) you are necessarily driven to create programs, policies, and yes --technology, that closes gaps and strengthens impact for all employees. This is called inclusive design and I’m proud to be co-founding Included where we bring this concept to life.

We haven’t yet seen the progress we want in business’ ability to recruit, develop, grow, and promote a robustly diverse, global workforce --but with technology like Included the ability to measure and track our outcomes is rising. 

Also promising, DEI leaders are now being asked to move from ‘why’ metrics to ‘how’ metrics (beautifully written about by Albrey Brown) --for example evolving from the question Why are we not retaining URM employees, to How can we meet the needs of URM employees?

I began DEI work at a time before technology existed as it does today, and before the private sector was investing in this topic. For twelve years I worked with civil society leaders across the country, and like them I dedicated my life's work to closing opportunity gaps across our society. 

The employee resource groups (ERGs), DEI councils, leadership development, and inclusion and belonging practices that my contemporaries and those mentors that came before us pioneered in civil society were innovated to increase the reach, impact, and power of marginalized voices in the democratic process. These same structures are now being adopted by HR and DEI leaders across the globe at a breakneck pace. 

That global brands are adopting these frameworks bodes well for a strong belonging and inclusion experience per employee. But as my mentors taught me decades ago when I began this work in a pre-technology environment: follow the numbers --they prove out our story. 

At Included we help DEI & HR leaders to measure what matters, continuously.

Included’s People Data Platform (PDP) allows CDOs, DEI and HR leaders to go beyond current state and gain access to the insights they need to tell the full and complete people story of their workforce development.

If you are interested in learning more about how our Early Adopter customers are continuously measuring and improving the reach and impact of their global DEI programs, please reach out. I’d be happy to discuss our results and what opportunities there are to join our Early Adopter cohort!

Cheers, 

Laura Close

Co-Founder & CBDO, Included

www.included.ai

Email, we'd love to hear from you: [email protected]