Co-op’s Diversity Declaration Day

Co-op’s inclusion team wanted to build a more complete picture of demographics across the organisation.

Diversity data was already being used at Co-op to help make good decisions that benefited their colleagues and their communities. These are important values-based decisions such as getting recruitment right, increasing diverse leadership, developing training, and making sure their people were representative of the communities they serve.

The inclusion team was keen to increase the number of colleagues completing the self-declaration. They wanted to drive up completion by 5% which may seem modest but (as in most organisations) there are often reasons why some people prefer not to submit data - perhaps they don’t see why it matters to them, or they are worried about how it will be used. So it can be tough to boost the rate.

Co-op asked us to help.

Testing tactics

We worked with the inclusion team to test out what would work for encouraging more people to do a task that was simple but which created some reluctance.

The project had lots of opportunities to using a testing approach, tweaking elements of what we were doing and using split tests so we could see what small tactics might make a difference. For example, do more people open an email if it arrives from a senior executive or from the Inclusion email address?

And we wanted to test a hypothesis: If Co-op assigned a ‘declaration day’ where everyone is encouraged to complete the information before a deadline, it would increase completion rates. We set to work to build a campaign to test this hypothesis.

Campaign elements

There were three main campaign elements:

1. Explaining why it matters

Crucially, people needed to see why completing diversity data made any positive difference. This would help reassure anyone who viewed the exercise with suspicion (‘Will I face discrimination?’, ‘Will I be replaced if I don’t count as ‘diverse’ enough?’).

Co-op wanted to communicate that everyone’s personal information was safe and secure, and that the goal of gathering data was to help make good decisions and support all of its staff and communities.

The campaign explained how data would be used, and that it would be protected.

It also highlighted that everyone’s data was needed in order to build a meaningful picture of the Co-op. The idea of a jigsaw puzzle worked perfectly – everyone formed a piece, and the picture was only complete when all the pieces came together…

2. Timeboxing

Often people work better if there’s a deadline, or sense of ‘event’ around an exercise.

So we wanted to test out that hypothesis we mentioned… that more people would complete the diversity declaration it if there was a specific time period or deadline attached.

Creating ‘Declaration Day’ helped to focus attention. Everyone was asked to complete their data that day (3^rd November), with a final deadline a week later.

This also created a sense of social norms – everyone was doing the same thing that day.

3. Equipping managers

The campaign was focused on equipping managers so they could encourage their teams and be able to talk to people about any questions or concerns.

A Leaders Pack was provided to all managers with straightforward information about the goals, how data would be used, and how it would help the organisation.

Leaders and managers across the whole organisation were sent a calendar invitation for     Declaration Day, so that they had the event in their diary with all the information they needed within the invitation. They were then sent a reminder and follow up emails.

The results

There was a clear uplift in completions on Declaration Day, and for the following week up until the deadline.

There was a 9.2% increase in just the first 24 hours – an impressive result when the target was 5%.

The concept of Declaration Day has created a repeatable event, and there are more opportunities to run more split tests next time around.

Our client said:

“This is brilliant! Absolutely love it.”