The challenge

A mission to ignite change

Powered by Diversity makes Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) affordable and accessible to organisations of all sizes. Having different perspectives and opinions in the workplace is a powerful game-changer for organisations, and Powered by Diversity’s mission is to make it easy for all organisations to access this superpower.

By offering a research-based assessment framework and a treasure trove of resources and toolkits, Powered by Diversity empowers organisations to unlock the full potential of diverse perspectives, fostering innovation and growth in the workplace. Using deeply diagnostic intersectional data and tailored recommendations, they help organisations close the gap to becoming truly inclusive.Designed as an iterative process, organisations can monitor their progress annually, equipping them with fresh data and tailored recommendations to sustain and enhance their EDI progress.

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Scaling EDI initiatives with technology

Following early commercial success with manually rolling out their assessment framework, Powered by Diversity realised they needed a way to scale how they engage with organisations, and so they looked for a technology partner to help them do just that.

The Powered by Diversity team approached Pixie Labs to help turn their framework, indicators and resources into a self-service platform that any organisation could use. During our early exploratory calls, we identified three areas critical to their success:

• The first was navigating the user experience challenges of the lengthy surveys (over 80 questions) to ensure high completion rates.    This challenge required careful design thinking to ensure completion rates weren’t negatively affected.

• The second was ensuring the vast amount of disaggregated demographic data generated by the surveys didn’t overwhelm a viewer    and result in inaction. We needed to make sure the EDI data was easily actionable. The third was ensuring respondents trusted that    any sensitive and valuable information they provided couldn't be tied back to them or used against them. We needed to create a safe    environment for respondents to provide candid and valuable feedback.In addition to these technical challenges, we had to meet the    overarching requirement for speed to secure a first-mover advantage in the market.

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The solution

Discovery and design

We took Powered by Diversity through a detailed discovery and design phase to set the project up for success during the build. Working with the Powered by Diversity team and a handful of their early customers, we set out to build a deep understanding of what it would take for a successful launch. We uncovered the key requirements for the platform, validated any assumptions and prioritised features based on their value.

Pixie Labs collaborated with Powered by Diversity to create a comprehensive platform that addressed their challenges and their user's needs:

Gathering quality data

Powered by Diversity’s surveys are extensive and cover a broad spectrum of sensitive topics in considerable detail. Our research indicated that longer surveys could adversely affect completion rates, resulting in inaccurate results. Our design needed to balance detail (enough questions ) and volume (enough responses).We crafted a visually engaging user experience that eases some of the cognitive effort needed to complete the surveys and encourages high completion rates. We crafted a visually engaging user experience that eases some of the cognitive effort needed to complete the surveys and encourages high completion rates.

Making data actionable

Actionable data is pivotal to the success of the Powered by Diversity platform. We designed a dynamic, intuitive dashboard that displays data at different levels alongside curated recommendations. This view lets leadership teams easily identify key areas for improvement and take action.

Building user trust

EDI can be a sensitive subject. To create a safe environment for respondents to give candid responses, we developed a method to anonymise the data after aggregating results. We also hide small data to preserve respondent anonymity. This approach encourages respondents to speak freely and gives leadership an accurate representation of how well they are doing when it comes to EDI.

Time to market

We combined off-the-shelf technology with bespoke software to rapidly build and deploy the platform. The solution comprised a mobile-friendly platform with a custom survey component, headless CMS to manage recommendations and content, a bespoke dashboard and tailored product analytics.

Build and Launch

Using an Agile approach, we worked closely with the Powered by Diversity team in short iterations of two weeks to build, test and deploy the platform. This let us test different parts of the platform as we built it to get feedback as we go rather than having to wait until the end.

The Outcome & Results

The Powered by Diversity Platform is a pioneer in intersectional EDI analytics. It gives organisational leadership the ability to understand the experiences of various societal groups within their organisation and make meaningful improvements in their EDI efforts. Glowing customer feedback reflects the platform's unmatched insights and actionable data. Powered by Diversity’s users feel empowered, supported, in control and excited to take action.

‍"The platform was a financially accessible way for us to get consultant-level data at a fraction of the price. But the question shouldn’t be whether you can afford to do this, it’s whether you can afford not to. It was a no-brainer for us." - Gareth CEO @ 4C (acquired by Wipro later that year)

The impact and reach of the platform have been incredible. Its Leadership Assessment, designed to bring leadership teams together to come to a shared understanding of their EDI status, has a 100% completion rate. And its Employee Assessment, designed to provide a space where employees feel heard, has an 86% completion rate. This translates into reaching and positively impacting hundreds of of thousands of people through invaluable recommendations generated by the Powered by Diversity platform.

We asked the Powered by Diversity founder, Cat Wildman, what advice she would give to others considering working with Pixie Labs, and this is what she said:

‍“It really comes down to whether you are looking for a genuine pound-for-pound partner on this journey, and if you are, then you need to choose Pixie Labs. What you are going to get from Pixie Labs is quality, a key reason I really wanted to work with Pixie Labs is that I know they do not build throw-away code. We've built a tank that looks like a Ferrari, it's fantastic. It can scale, it can meet all sorts of challenges, it's totally secure, the data is protected, and it works beautifully. What they build is absolutely beautiful products that work.” - Cat Wildman, Founder @ Powered By Diversity