During this podcast episode, host Brandon Laws interviews Randeep Purewal, the CEO and Founder of Divercial, a comprehensive B2B SaaS solution for creating an inclusive work environment. Randeep discusses how the platform uses technology to eliminate bias and gather trustworthy data, ultimately leading to increased productivity and employee engagement. Find out if you’re prioritizing cognitive diversity and placing employees in positions to thrive.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Randeep Purewal MBA is the CEO and Founder of Divercial, a B2B SaaS employee experience platform aimed at fostering inclusive workplace cultures. With 15 years of experience in finance, Randeep is a pioneering authority on Inclusive Talent Management and Leadership.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
ADDRESSING THE ISSUE
Guest Randeep Purewal has always had a passion for leadership, but as she began to climb the corporate ladder, she found herself hindered by a frustrating “glass ceiling.” She recognized the inherent bias of decision-makers, including a lack of opportunities for women of color. The solution? To find better balance in the workplace by placing a more diverse group of decision-makers in every aspect and dimension of business.
According to Randeep, bias is often unconscious and ingrained in the culture of organizations. Her new B2B SaaS platform, Divercial, specializes in talent management and building inclusive workplaces, providing tools and education around making authentic and lasting change for the future of work.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Using Tech to Remove Bias
“Bias is unconscious. […] It’s literally formed by our patterns, our experiences, the content we consume, so if that isn’t diverse, that means that your decision-making capabilities are gonna be that much more narrow, right? So that’s why you need lots of different backgrounds and stuff to be able to do this. And as much as I have really trained my brain to be conscious, not unconscious, I still believe technology is less biased than humans. […] It’s literally going to be more objective and less biased in determining what sort of strategies and initiatives we should implement.”
Gathering Reliable Data
“Employees will be more, I would say, forthcoming using a third-party company rather than your in-house. And […] anonymity is super important for us. […] The data is gonna be scrubbed and provided in aggregate form so people cannot get identified. But anonymity — very, very important. And it will be used in conjunction with other data points as well that we collect throughout the platform. And then I think what’s gonna be really cool down the road is that everything is relative. So a lot of times questions are like, ‘How do we know how we are doing? Like are we good? Are we bad?’ So when you can collect that data and start doing peer benchmarking, then you know where your organization ranks to like other peer groups.”
Making Recommendations
“When you’re doing consulting work, you give your deliverable, and then you tell them, ‘Okay, these are my recommendations. Go, execute, and implement.’ And we all know nothing ever happens — right? — regardless of which sector you’re consulting in. But what’s really cool is that you will receive the recommendations, and I think that is the difference. […] Let’s get that information, so let the data decide, but then how do you weigh that to people who feel microaggressions at work? […] And so our algorithm will kind of help you prioritize those things for the greatest impact.”
Knowing Your People
“One of the dimensions of diversity that never really gets talked about much is cognitive diversity, right? So it’s how our brains function, and we know they all function differently, right? It’s what kind of behaviors, tendencies, and preferences you have in the way you work. And essentially what you wanna do is understand every employee. […] And so what you wanna understand is like how you can put your employees in positions of success. […] So when you have a better understanding of those things of your employees, you can create those win-wins.”
An All-in-One Solution
“When it comes to building that inclusive workplace culture, you have everything in the tool. So in the current state, people are using piecemeal. So to your point, they’re using one tool for this thing, and then one tool for that thing. So for example, if you’re using a survey tool, ours is already pre-built, and then secondly it’s like, ‘How are you managing this?’ We also have a screen in the tool so you can track and manage or monitor your progress. Oh, who’s managing the ERGs? Employee resource groups. Oh, guess what? You can go into our tool and look at that. So that was the premise.”
The Help You Need
“A lot of times what we find is that small- to medium-sized organizations — let’s say a couple hundred employees — you may not have a person managing this, and/or you don’t know where to start. You don’t have the time to figure out how to implement it, and time and budget are the primary resources, right? So that’s definitely where we’re looking to help.”
Your Bottom Line
“When your employees feel included, they’re engaged. And when they’re engaged, they’re productive. And when they’re productive, guess what? It impacts your bottom line. Right? And according to Gallup last year, 7.8 trillion globally were lost due to disengagement. So yeah, there’s a lot of money being left on the table.”
LEARN MORE
Find out more about Randeep Purewal’s innovative new employee experience platform, Divercial, here.