How Can Passive ONA Highlight the Impact of Relationships on Diversity and Inclusion?
One month ago, in July of 2021, Excellence in People Analytics was published. We have been humbled by the reaction to the book and how it is already influencing the discipline of people analytics. As the world emerges from the global pandemic, it is clear that new ways of working need to be adopted in all industries and countries around the globe.
One of the most complex topics we have encountered is that of diversity, equality and inclusion. It is almost universally accepted that companies with diverse leadership outperform those without; Gallup found that gender-diverse business units have higher average revenue than less diverse business units. Despite this, McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2020 report on workplace practices in over 300 companies highlights that although there has been a significant increase in women joining the workforce, women are not advancing into leadership: only 85 women were promoted to manager for every 100 men, leaving women holding just 38% of manager-level positions, while men held 62%.
This phenomenon is not exclusive to business. As seen in a brand new study from Weill Cornell Medicine and The Science of Diversity & Inclusion Initiative (SODI), women are disproportionately underrepresented in leadership positions in Medicine.
Within surgical specialties, lead author and Associate Professor of Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, Maria V Suurna MD, noted that whilst women accounted for just over one-third of total surgical faculty, they represented less than 10% of the full Professor group.
Fig 1. Gender representation at hierarchical levels in surgical departments at Weill Cornell Medicine (Reproduced from Underrepresented Women Leaders: Lasting Impact of Gender Homophily in Surgical Faculty Networks, Laryngoscope, 00:1–6, 2021)
Dr. Suurna was keen to understand the underlying behaviour. With support from her (male) chair, she initiated a project with Manish Goel, founder and CEO of relationship analytics company TrustSphere, and Andreas Leibbrandt, PhD, economist and founder of SODI.
The hypotheses were 1) men and women build/maintain different relationship networks and 2) women are not similarly included within the organisation and do not receive the same sponsorship as male counterparts.
“We had a unique opportunity with this study,” says Professor Leibbrandt. “We were in Data Heaven: a large complete network, objectively measured connections, and a large enough number of male and female actors at different hierarchies provided us with the possibility to glimpse into the role of workplace interactions and the extent to which they were or were not contributing to women’s career progression.”
Using TrustSphere’s relationship analytics technology, the team conducted an organisational network analysis (ONA) of over 1.6 million email connections between 345 full-time faculty members over three months. The strength of relationships was analysed and compared according to gender and academic rank, to better understand homophily structures within faculty networks.
“Homophily
The tendency for people to seek out or be attracted to those who are similar to themselves.”
In surgical departments, men maintained strong relationships with other men 73% of the time and with women 27% of the time. Women, in contrast, had 58% of relationships with men and 42% with women. Additionally, women had 35% fewer relationships than men.
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These results highlight the following:
Men demonstrate homophily to a greater extent than women.
Women have significantly fewer relationships with men than men have with men.
Given the lower number of women at senior levels, women do not have as significant an opportunity to progress as men.
Put another way: people who are similar naturally gravitate towards each other, and given the environment and networks in this example, there is a bias towards men in senior positions gravitating towards men in less-senior positions.
“The data helped us confirm our instincts,” says Dr. Suurna. “Many of us, including male colleagues, instinctively felt the ‘boys club’ culture was part of the challenge women were facing. Now we have objective data, we can start making changes.”
This is a prime example of how people analytics can shine a spotlight on important topics. Organisations can look at gender diversity through a new lens using ONA data to understand how structural homophily within professional networks may be impacting career progression. What’s more, as we discuss in Excellence in People Analytics, projects like this one can be scaled to make a real difference in society and industry.
The study also proves that organisations of any size and capability can successfully use data in complex situations – in this example, the hypotheses about diversity could be analysed easily because the data (i.e. email metadata) already existed. Further, this type of analysis can be conducted for the benefit of employees easily because there is no requirement to collect additional data, and as in this study, it can be conducted on a strictly de-identified basis with appropriate internal oversight (or regulations).
“Anyone with a curiosity about gender diversity in their organisation can undertake a similar analysis,” Dr. Suurna concludes.
Digital collaboration metadata exists in every company in the world. The topic of diversity is important for organisational success in every company in the world. This type of study can shine a light on topics such as homophily within network structures with relative ease. We urge companies to do this to make a difference in their organisations and society in the important area of diversity, equality and inclusion.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jonathan Ferrar is CEO of Insight222, and a Board Member of the CIPD and TrustSphere. In addition to being a co-author Excellence in People Analytics (Kogan Page, July 2021) with David Green, Jonathan is also co-author of The Power of People (Pearson, May 2017).
David Green is Vice President & Managing Director of the Insight222 People Analytics Program®, host of the Digital HR Leaders podcast and a board advisor to TrustSphere.