In 2025 with organisations facing continued financial pressures, we now find ourselves on the brink of an AI-revolution which will have extensive implications on workforce management. Organisations have reached a decisive fork in the road: they can double down on past workforce management strategies, applying increased command and control pressure, taking out people costs using whatever means possible, and making significant investments in risk and compliance infrastructure to help navigate the unknown; or they can adopt a people-centred approach, focusing on the uniquely human things that drive business growth in the 21st century economy - up/re-skilling, innovation, resilience, and change adoption.
Managing cost-cutting demands while also building a future-ready workforce is a huge challenge for today’s people leaders.
The first path is almost certainly unsustainable, and most CEOs already recognise as much: in PwC’s 2024 Annual Global CEO Survey, 45% of global CEOs (up from 40% in 2023) believe their company will not be viable in 10 years if it stays on its current path. The second path calls for no-regrets investment in future-proofing the workforce; and while it won’t be free, it will certainly deliver a strong return on investment in years to come. One of the key success enablers on the second pathway is a culture of inclusion.
Despite good intentions, many organisations still struggle to foster an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and empowered to succeed - which research shows leads to more discretionary effort1, increased collaboration2, and reduced attrition3. This disconnect often stems from a critical gap in how companies approach inclusion - starting from the fact that often, they’re just not measuring it.
While diversity metrics are easily tracked, inclusion - which is the key to unlocking the full potential of a diverse workforce - often goes unquantified.
When done effectively, measurement can transform inclusion from an abstract concept into a concrete strategy for organisational success. Throughout this guide we will offer practical advice on how to effectively measure inclusion, empowering leaders to build a future-ready workforce.
Understanding inclusion
Many organisations believe that they already measure inclusion, often relying on a few questions embedded in a wider listening exercise, such as an annual employee engagement survey. In recent years engagement surveys have become a catch-all for understanding employee sentiment, measuring views on a whole host of important issues, from compensation to company strategy. There are myriad benefits to engagement surveys, however they can be a blunt instrument if what you really want to understand is inclusion.
Engagement surveys are often not precise enough to identify culture problems or negative sentiment within specific sub-groups or pockets of the business. Especially within larger organisations, important cultural truths can be hiding in plain sight, masked or obscured by ‘averages’. When leaders happily report that they have a 70% employee engagement score, we immediately have many questions about the 30%.
Additionally, engagement surveys often fail to identify actionable insights. Once you have identified a population that feels disengaged or excluded, how do you go about designing effective interventions? Simply knowing a population does not feel included is not enough; you will either need to conduct further listening to uncover the ‘why’ or implement interventions with a trial and error approach, which in many cases is costly and lacks impact. This is because inclusion is not just a fleeting sentiment; it is the outcome of interconnected systems, behaviours, and organisational processes that drive collaboration, innovation, and performance by ensuring all employees can contribute their full potential.
An effective measurement approach must therefore be able to disaggregate the many drivers that contribute to one’s feeling of inclusion, or lack thereof, so that it can more precisely identify areas for focus and improvement. At PwC, we think of inclusion as an equation made up of belonging, fairness and trust.
Rather than relying on a vague sense of inclusion, which is often interpreted differently by different people, savvy organisations measure each of its component parts to gain actionable insights, understand where gaps exist, and design targeted interventions that address specific barriers to inclusion within their workforce.
‘Why should I measure inclusion if I’m already measuring diversity?’
Diversity refers to the different types of people within an organisation, often measured by demographics such as age, gender and ethnicity, disability, religious faith and socioeconomic background.
Workplace inclusion refers to an environment where everyone feels respected, valued, and able to fully contribute their skills and abilities. An inclusive environment is one where people know that difference is valued, all ideas are considered, and that everyone has equal access to opportunities. It’s important to measure inclusion, as it’s linked to higher engagement4 and lower attrition5, and is a critical success factor in activating and retaining a diverse workforce6.
Organisations that invest in diversity but not inclusion may find themselves with an expensive revolving door of talent. Despite big investments in attracting and hiring diverse talent, non inclusive workplaces are often unable to reap the benefits of their diversity ambitions due to higher turnover of marginalised groups who don’t feel they can contribute. Even more pernicious, non inclusive workplaces risk teetering into toxic workplaces, where employees are subject to discrimination and harassment. Inclusion is the key to unlocking the value of diversity within any workplace, and must be considered and measured in its own right.
Theory to practice: Practical methods for measuring inclusion
Measuring inclusion requires moving beyond surface level assessments that capture an average moment-in-time sentiment. Very few organisations have a single culture. In fact most have a series of micro-cultures formed around geographic locations, business units or individual leaders. Inclusion levels will typically vary between these micro-cultures and thus need to be assessed both independently and in aggregate, alongside additional personal characteristics that may impact experiences of inclusion. By combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, organisations can gain a fuller picture of these experiences within their organisation and understand how inclusive their culture truly is. From employee sentiment surveys to network analysis, the right tools can help leaders ensure that inclusion becomes a measurable component of their workforce strategy.
Outlined below are the types of data that can be used to measure inclusion, how to collect it and why it is important.
- Employee sentiment data
- Diversity data (self-ID)
- HR data
- Operational data
Employee sentiment data
- What: Self reported data from employees which give insights into how they feel about their organisation, their colleagues and their work.
- Methods of collection: Surveys, focus groups, exit interviews, employee resource group (ERG) feedback, external sources such as Glassdoor
- Why it’s important: Provides insights into the employee experience, helping to identify underlying factors that may affect employee engagement, productivity, and retention. When analysed with other types of data, employee sentiment can be a powerful tool to understand the different experiences within your organisation.
Diversity data (self-ID)
- What: Demographic information that employees voluntarily provide about themselves
- Methods of collection: Some data will be collected as part of recruitment and employment (e.g. sex and age), however further demographic data should be collected within your HR system.
- Why it’s important: On its own, it tells you who is in your organisation, however when combined with other data sources, it can unlock deep insights into disparities in employee experience between demographics groups. As a start, you can ask basic questions like, do your employees reflect your customer base, or your local community? Does your leadership team match the diversity of your wider workforce? Are there ‘hot spots’ of certain demographic groups in your organisation, e.g. are the majority of women leaders in your HR or marketing department?
HR data
- What: Information about employees collected by HR as part of the employee life cycle, such as job grading, promotions, sickness rates, performance ratings, etc.
- Methods of collection: Ideally all this information should be stored in your HR system
- Why it’s important: Within your HR system is a cornucopia of people data, showing you the reality of how employees experience your organisation, from how long it took them to get their last promotion, to disciplinaries and performance management. When combined with diversity data, HR data enables you to map how different groups move through your organisation, from joining to exiting, identifying potential barriers within the talent lifecycle, providing a measure of inclusion, and helping you to target your interventions. Questions you can answer with this data include ‘Are all ethnic groups equally likely to get an interview?’; ‘Do women get promoted as quickly as men?’; and ‘Is our attrition equally spread across all demographic groups?’
Operational data
- What: Information generated through working practices such as workflow process and efficiency data, risk and compliance data, and employee collaboration and communication data
- Methods of collection: Communications (e.g. email, chat, calendars, etc.), business and operational systems (e.g. timesheets, CRM systems, etc.), finance systems
- Why it’s important: Organisations generate a wealth of data every day, and much of this can be analysed to help understand inclusion. Each email, sale, and timesheet can be used to measure inclusion if we ask the correct questions and analyse the data. Linking operational data with diversity data can help to identify areas of bias in decision-making and ways of working; are career defining projects mostly staffed by an ‘in-group’? Are some groups less likely to be included in important decision-making meetings? Are certain groups experiencing delayed or fewer email responses, hindering their ability to complete tasks effectively?
By analysing data from multiple sources, organisations can identify patterns that reveal the state of inclusion and highlight key strengths and targeted opportunities for improvement. Where blanket interventions often result in wasted resources and minimal impact, targeted interventions enable focused investments that yield impacts beyond inclusive culture - from innovation to market share.
Employee survey best practice
As explored in the previous section, the most common method organisations rely on for measuring inclusion is employee surveys. While conventional methodologies provide limited actionable insights for organisations, there are a number of simple ways that organisations can upgrade their employee surveys and make them work harder:
Asking the right questions: Asking a single broad question such as “Do you feel included?” or ‘is x an inclusive workplace?’ won't reveal which drivers of inclusion are contributing to - or detracting from - employee satisfaction. You need to break down questions into individual drivers of inclusion - we recommend belonging, fairness and trust - to ensure a clear meaning and identify the gaps in your culture.
Disaggregating demographics: Having one inclusion score for your workforce might mask discrepancies in experience between different demographic groups. You need to disaggregate by business unit (e.g. departments, seniority) and identity (e.g. gender, age) to identify how different groups experience your culture differently.
Understanding what’s most important: Whilst it may seem counter-intuitive, prioritising the lowest scoring inclusion factors might not always yield the greatest impact. Belonging, fairness and trust each affect employees' sense of inclusion differently, and depending on your unique workforce and culture, one factor may be more important than another. For example, some employees might feel a strong sense of inclusion if they experience belonging amongst their peers, even if they perceive a lack of organisational fairness. On the other hand, others may prioritise fairness above all else. To make meaningful progress, organisations must identify which factors have the greatest influence on inclusion for their workforce and prioritise investment in those areas.
Conclusion
Ultimately, measuring and responding to workforce inclusion needs is not just an Employee Value Proposition play - it is a strategic business necessity. Organisations that prioritise inclusion are best positioned to improve employee engagement and drive innovation, creativity and business performance. In a competitive talent marketplace, those who embrace inclusion as a core value will be more likely to reap the long term benefits of a productive and high performing workforce.
By adopting a systematic approach to measuring inclusion, through robust data collection, analysis and actionable insights, organisations can uncover their unique inclusion thumbprint. Emerging tools, such as AI and machine learning, are enabling organisations to gather richer insights than ever before, allowing them to form a deeper understanding of individualised employee experiences. These insights can serve as the foundation for strategic initiatives that elevate employee experiences, especially for employee groups who have been previously excluded or ignored.
Gallup’s Employee Engagement indicator is telling - their latest results show only 23% of employees globally are engaged at work. More recently we’ve been hearing about quiet quitting, fake work and fauxductivity. No matter what we call it, this persistent trend is bad news for our people and bad news for business. Given increasing financial pressures pushing organisations to do more with less, unlocking employee engagement has never been more crucial for business success. Measuring inclusion in the same way that you’d measure other priority inputs to business success gives us the hope that we can understand what’s been holding us back, and laser focus our scarce resources on powering up for the future.
[1] Dar, N., Kundi, Y.M. and Umrani, W.A., 2024. Leader-member exchange and discretionary work behaviors: the mediating role of perceived psychological safety. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 45(4), pp.636-650
[2] Edmondson, A.C. and Roloff, K.S., 2008. Overcoming barriers to collaboration: Psychological safety and learning in diverse teams. In Team effectiveness in complex organizations (pp. 217-242). Routledge.
[3] BCG BLISS Index 2023, available: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-to-improve-inclusion-in-the-workplace
[4] Goswami, S. and Goswami, B.K., 2018. Exploring the relationship between workforce diversity, inclusion and employee engagement. Drishtikon: A Management Journal, 9(1), pp.65-89.
[5] BCG BLISS Index 2023, available: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-to-improve-inclusion-in-the-workplace
[6] BCG BLISS Index 2023, available: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-to-improve-inclusion-in-the-workplace
