Forecast When You’ll Hit Representation Goals and Model Scenarios to Help Achieve Goals Faster: Introducing the New OppEQ Forecaster

Most companies want to improve diversity. They’re also increasingly on the hook to share data on pay gaps, which are driven by representation gaps in the highest paying jobs of the company. With transparency comes calls for action. 

Companies are trying to respond by setting goals that look something like this: “By 2030, we will achieve 50% female representation at all levels.” But setting goals doesn’t mean you’ll reach them. Many of the teams responsible for acting on these goals don’t know if their numbers are realistic — or when or how they’ll achieve them. 

To help companies accelerate progress on diversity goals, Syndio is excited to announce the launch of a new representation Forecaster feature set in our OppEQ®solution. OppEQ measures your current demographic makeup, benchmarks against available talent, and helps you develop meaningful diversity goals. Now with the new Forecaster, it also helps you set and improve timelines for reaching those goals. 

Learn more about OppEQ Forecaster below.

Why measuring opportunity equity matters

When it comes to career advancement, women and people of color face both inequitable promotion rates and inequitable attrition rates. For example, according to LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company’s 2022 Women in the Workplace Report, women face a “broken rung” at the very first step of their career ladder when moving from entry-level to manager. 

Without providing equal access to career advancement and improving inequitable attrition rates, companies will never close their representation and pay gaps.

That’s where OppEQ® comes in. OppEQ is the opportunity equity analytics toolset within Syndio’s Workplace Equity Analytics Platform, purpose-built to help companies achieve tangible progress around diversity and leadership representation by measuring disparities and zooming in on your biggest opportunities for change. OppEQ’s current feature set includes:

• OppEQ representation analysis: Analyzes your current workforce to understand what representation looks like across levels and departments to help you answer “what does our company look like now?” 
• OppEQ levels & benchmarking analysis: Helps you answer “what should we look like” by benchmarking your employee population against both internal talent availability and external labor pool data. This lets you identify your biggest gaps to prioritize as goals. 
• New! OppEQ Forecaster: With this newest feature, you can now clearly answer the question “when will we reach our goals?”

How OppEQ Forecaster works

OppEQ’s forecasting capabilities help you go from guesswork to data-driven targets and action plans. This interactive feature lets you see how representation will change over time based on your current practices, and model out different scenarios to test their impact and see how potential changes could speed up progress. 

With the new Forecaster tool, you can:

• Forecast when — and if — you will hit each of your diversity targets based on expected growth, attrition, and promotion rates
• Model different scenarios to see the impact on future diversity trajectories 
• Make the case for specific policies or focus areas that would accelerate progress

“Syndio’s Workplace Equity Platform helped us zero in on our two biggest areas of opportunity, and showed us how we could attain our goals years sooner through targeted efforts aimed at those opportunities. Before Syndio, we did not have that level of visibility into our data or insight into the solutions.” 

Adrienne Gemperle, Chief People Officer, sweetgreen

Want to make progress? You need specific goals with clear timelines.

According to HR analyst Josh Bersin, about 80% of companies are “just going through the motions” of DE&I and “not holding themselves accountable.” Goals that have vague or lengthy timelines lack accountability. Data is key to creating an achievable action plan with realistic timelines. 

If you don’t feel confident about when you’ll hit your diversity and representation goals or feel like your timelines are so far-off they lack accountability, OppEQ can help you set data-driven timelines so you can not only forecast when you’ll hit them, but advocate for new investments if you won’t hit them soon enough. With OppEQ, you can move confidently towards your goals and accelerate progress now.

Want to see OppEQ in action? We’d love to show you.