The Inclusion Lab
Organisations are striving to improve diversity and inclusion. Yet we have very little evidence about what works.
Research has shown that traditional approaches to improving the status quo are mixed, and sometimes even backfire (Dobbin & Kalev, 2016; Forscher et al., 2019). MoreThanNow’s Inclusion Lab supports organisations to improve their practices through:
Data discovery: We pinpoint the precise moments within organisational practice that hamper diversity and inclusion efforts. By exploring hiring, promotions, and retention data – and cross-referencing this with employee engagement data - we can identify specific points in the process to improve diversity and inclusion practice.
Experimental research: We conduct applied experimental research to understand what works best to improve diversity and inclusion efforts. We design and evaluate interventions focused on specific moments in time – when a hiring manager selects who to invite to interview, when a line manager chooses who to promote amongst their team, or when employees and managers come together in a performance review.
Our 3-year journey with Ericsson has shown how collaborating in this way can significantly improve diversity and inclusion practices within organisations.
The academics involved:
Iris Bohnet is the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and the co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Iris wrote the behavioural science book on gender equality - ‘What Works’ - a cornerstone in the field and a huge inspiration to MoreThanNow. She is also the faculty chair of the executive program “Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century” which is part of the World Economic Forum.
Edward Chang is a Harvard Business School Assistant Professor and one of the first researchers to conduct a randomised controlled experiment on diversity training. The project, summarised in HBR, had served as an inspiration for much of MoreThanNow’s research on training initiatives, and was co-authored with behavioural scientists such as Adam Grant, Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth. If you want to read more about his work, he was recently featured in this Bloomberg news article.
Siri Chilazi is a Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy’s Women and Public Policy Programme. She is specialised in creating and testing interventions for organisations to achieve gender equality and increase inclusivity. Siri has published many HBR articles, such as this recent gem which illustrates a framework on how to connect individual action to systematic change when it comes to including everyone in the workplace.
The also part of this lab is our academic advisor Oliver Hauser. Oliver is a professor in Economics at the University of Exeter. He is a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow as well. In recent year, Oliver also founded the “BIG IDEAs: Using Randomised Controlled Trials to Reduce Bias in the Workplace” initiative which is a revolutionary project to reduce bias in the workplace.
Erika Kirgios is an Assistant Professor of Behavioural Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She wants to improve outcomes for women and racial minorities in the workplace by identifying and testing interventions. She recently published this study together with Edward and Katy Milkman in Nature on the positive impact of minorities disclosing their demographic identities when seeking help, also summarised in the Scientific American.
Cansin Arslan is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Exeter and also a researcher at the BIG IDEAS initiative. At MoreThanNow, she also holds the position of Consultant Data Analyst. Cansin completed her PhD in Economics and a Masters in Quantitative economics, before becoming a consultant at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).