We've worked with over 80 companies on building our inclusion scale as well as our whole product, including Charlie HR, Deliveroo, Beamery, Tray.io and even giants like IBM and Accenture. We’ve used scientific methodology academics would use on the construction of our inclusion scale using the latest scientific literature. The process took over 3 months and it was highly iterative. At the end of it, we confirmed both the validity and reliability of our survey instrument.
Scale design
In-depth review of the scientific literature on inclusion to build a theoretical model. This is also where we defined dimensions of the inclusion experience;
Writing items covering all relevant sub-topics of inclusion. We created over 120 items with the ultimate goal to end up with about 20 validated questions;
Consolidating items that were covering the same topic from different angles;
Reviewing the items against the literature, as a final step before testing our scale.
Scale validation
Expert review of our scale: we ran both a survey and interviews with dozens of D&I experts & practitioners to review the construct validity of our scale. The data was used to consolidate the dimension structure, and the interviews to identify any gaps in our theoretical model;
Cognitive interviews with (real) employees to test if our items are clearly understood by our target audience. The interviews helped us understand people's thought processes while answering the assessment. It’s a key step in making sure we're collecting high-quality data which is generalisable across teams and organisations;
Review multidimensionality of our scale: our items are each written to measure specific constructs. We ran online validation studies with over 500 respondents to confirm the item-construct match (through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis - if you’re interested we’re very happy to go into more detail here!). Any items that didn’t achieve a high match were discarded. We also confirmed the internal reliability of our scale;
Confirm convergent validity: by asking our 500 respondents to complete a widely-used academic inclusion scale alongside ours, we could test if our scales correlate (and thus measure the same construct). They do!
Understand responses across demographic groups: People from different key demographic groups completed the survey and their understanding of and response to the items were consistent. In other words, we can be confident that we’re measuring inclusion accurately.
The result is an inclusion scale with 21 items, that each measure key elements of inclusion. The analysis then looks at different subgroups’ experiences, as this is where lack of inclusion may surface. As a company, you will gain insight into important gaps between the experiences and perspectives of majority employees (heterosexual white men) and minority employees (women, ethnic minorities, etc.). The patterns we see in the data then form the basis of the D&I strategy (which we go into below).
From data to effective strategy: our integrated approach
We’ve now reviewed the employee inclusion survey, but it’s only a small part of the whole process. In the same survey, we also collect data about employees’ experience with your policies and process that impact D&I and their diversity attributes like ethnicity, gender, neurodivergence and others. This data serves as one of three sources of insights used in our D&I audit, in which we also assess your current processes and policies and validate the documents you have in place. That’s why we’re able to deliver you a truly 360 overview of the D&I in your business.
We’ve built a process, a D&I maturity model, that takes you from insight into current practice (using the 250+ data points), to aligning key D&I priorities with your business OKRs, to building a D&I strategy using evidence-based recommendations. The recommendations are tailored to your D&I maturity. We don’t stop there, we’ll also help you implement the changes that will really move the needle. You will be able to confidently implement a roadmap of strategic actions and measure impact continuously.
In sum, everything we do at Fair HQ is based on scientific evidence, lots of data and behavioural science principles.