The 2011 CR report described the development of some new Experian software, which infers people's ethnic origins from their name: Diversity Monitor. In 2011 Experian began to apply the product to help companies understand and manage the diversity of their workforces. A case study showing The Royal Free Hospital's use of the product can be reached here. It has also used the software to analyse its own UK workforce.
Experian's Diversity Monitor tool works by comparing a list of names with a database, containing millions of first and family names from around the world. By weighting the combinations of names it can provide a strong indicative analysis of the ethnic mix of the names on the list. It is a statistical tool, in that it is best applied to large numbers of names, rather than an individual, but it gives companies the ability to look quickly and easily at their staff mix, without the need for intrusive questionnaires. It can be used to understand how the patterns in the employee data reflect the organisation's structure, the diversity of its employee catchment pool and its customers.
Experian initially used it to profile its 1,600 people working in Nottingham. By analysing a set of employee records and comparing it to the local population the Human Resources (HR) team was able to see which groups of people might be under- or over-represented in the workforce. The answer was 'none' — the Experian employees matched the catchment very closely.
But there were immediate additional insights that came from the data, and the HR team took on a more detailed analysis, extending this to the whole of the Experian UK team. During the year they have been able to look much more deeply into the statistics: are all divisions equally diverse, or are there concentrations of particular groups of people in particular roles? How does ethnic and gender diversity relate? Are more recent recruits more or less diverse than the average; is Experian getting its recruitment right?
The answers are extremely valuable and confirm that Experian's employees show a strong mix of origins. They also found that Experian is becoming more diverse; younger people come from a much greater mix of backgrounds, which is a useful insight for the recruitment team.
The project is ongoing, and they have also shared the findings with a representative group of employees to ask for their reaction to this use of their records. Employees felt that as long as it was only their names that were used and these were only handled by internal HR staff, they had no issues and felt it was a service with huge benefits for companies and society as whole.