CASE STUDY
Creating a sense of belonging
A global retailer and Accenture co-created a multiyear inclusion and diversity strategy to facilitate a greater sense of belonging for their people.
5-MINUTE READ
Call for change
Business is no longer just business—it’s personal.
Not fostering culture of inclusion can lead to employees feeling a lack of belonging. Which is why more and more organizations are trying to create an inclusive environment.
One global retailer with thousands of employees strove to create a more inclusive workplace in which people could thrive in a culture of belonging—but first it needed to pinpoint opportunities to act.
The company sought to harness data-driven insights to guide its inclusion and diversity (I&D) strategy and enhance the employee experience. To achieve these goals, it knew that it would need to look at its HR practices—and understand how to mitigate commonplace forms of bias that exist within organizations.
The company developed a team, complete with a cross section of experts from Accenture. This team would collaborate closely to conduct a scan of specific HR processes, co-create a multiyear I&D strategy and roadmap, and ultimately introduce initiatives to help facilitate a greater sense of belonging and achieve its I&D goals.
With the tools and strategy to uncover commonplace forms of unintended bias, we’re helping companies cultivate a greater sense of belonging.
When tech meets human ingenuity
The company decided to begin by uncovering commonplace forms of unintended bias across specific HR practices.
This entailed a detailed analysis to identify potential hot spots across targeted HR processes, determine actionable opportunities to enhance the employee experience and provide insight-driven recommendations.
To determine if the company’s HR processes were as equitable as possible for all employees, the team:
1
Aligned on which processes to review, identified available employee sources and confirmed an approach for the scan.
2
Led an analysis to uncover common forms of unintended bias, held workshops to measure process alignment vs. leading HR practices, and identified areas to mitigate bias and foster greater inclusivity.
3
Prioritized opportunities based on the areas identified, and recommendations to co-create a multiyear strategic I&D roadmap with the client.
A valuable difference
The solution enabled an equitable approach for all employees.
Moving away from often siloed, conventional approaches to bias detection (such as black box models or statistical machine learning), Accenture built a flexible analytics framework, bolstered by Accenture’s I&D frameworks and knowledge, to determine the degree and significance of bias within organizations.
This helps organizations pinpoint the highest areas of impact to focus on as they seek to mitigate bias.
The solution enabled the company to take a more focused, equitable approach for all employees, with particular attention to underrepresented groups.
The company is activating its roadmap with initiatives that could lead to increased engagement, decreased attrition and higher productivity, a more engaged workforce and inclusive workplace, and a greater sense of belonging for all its people.
Meet the team
Adam Cohen
Managing Director and Global Account Executive
LinkedIn
Talia Alexander
Functional Strategy Senior Manager – Talent & Human Potential
LinkedIn