How Mercer is driving diversity, equity and inclusion

The gender pay gap, lack of diversity, inclusion issues – all these, and more, are challenges being faced by companies of all sizes.

Our mission is to help organisations thrive by building and supporting equitable and inclusive workforces through a holistic focus on careers, health and financial well-being.

Find out how Mercer can help your organisation evolve through the adoption of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy.

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DEI in the workplace – Mercer your DEI consultant

We know most UK organisations say they are focused on improving diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), however, only half of UK organisations have a multi-year DEI strategy.

Our mission is to help organisations attract, promote and retain diverse talent by building and supporting equitable and inclusive workforces through a holistic focus on careers, health and financial wellbeing.

We believe that when people thrive, businesses and societies thrive.

Accelerate diversity, equity and inclusion

#3

Upholding diversity, equity and inclusion is the third top HR priority globally for 2023

28%

Yet, less than one third of companies have a DEI strategy

48%

of organisations say they take action to ensure their workforce profile reflects the market(s) in which they operate

38%

of HR leaders have plans to expand benefits to be more inclusive and supportive of all segments of the workforce

Mercer can support you with developing a roadmap to deliver a holistic DEI strategy through opportunity, experience, pay and health and financial wellbeing interventions and outcomes.

Mercer’s data-led insights can help you understand what needs to be done. Our insights are used by companies to design inclusive cultures, which have accountability built in.

This is how we do it:

We use data-led insights to understand the current state of DEI in your organisation. We do this by:

Pay gap, equal pay and pay equity support

Mercer provides pay gap legislation support, pay programme audits and for a truly rigorous, efficient, global pay remediation approach – pay equity. Our pay equity methodology determines the explained pay gap – pay differences due to role type, qualifications, experience – and unexplained pay gap – a residual pay gap that cannot be explained by legitimate factors.

Mapping your internal labour market and workforce projections

Assess the differences in hiring, promotion and turnover between different demographic groups within your organisation and use workforce projections to estimate the composition of your future workforce.

An organisation’s internal labour market (ILM) map can give us an at-a-glance visualisation of your workforce. ILM maps help track changes over time to mark progress. We also use workforce projections to estimate your future workforce by race, gender, age and more.

Finding out what your employees think: Employee listening and virtual focus groups

Mercer provides virtual focus group technology that enables a live, anonymous, virtual “collective conversation” with hundreds of colleagues globally.

We carry out pre-configured, off-the-shelf surveys that give organisations the ability to understand their employee attitudes to key DEI issues such as gender and diversity.

Finding out where your company is: Policy and practices benchmarks and audit

Measure how your organisation’s policies and practices compare with global, regional and industry survey results to identify key areas of DEI strategic opportunities. Measure how your organisation’s policies and practices compare with global and regional peers, with industry survey results from around 1,200 companies across 54 countries. This can help you identify key areas of DEI strategic opportunity.

Mercer can create an inclusive culture that places diversity, equity and inclusion front, back and centre of your organisation. We do this by:

Introducing an inclusive culture framework and robust pay equity practices

We look at three key areas – behavioural patterns, work environment and cultural sentiment. A holistic multi-year DEI strategy enables cultural change that goes beyond policy or programmatic changes to support equality of opportunity and treatment across the board.

Bias-free talent management practices and policies

In many organisations, women and employees of colour are underrepresented in the workforce. The representation of these colleagues’ gender and race drastically drops as career level rises. They typically receive lower performance ratings and pay, and they feel less valued at work.

Mercer can benchmark and redesign your HR policies and people practices, ensuring your organisation can reduce bias and attract and retain top talent.

Global inclusive leadership training

We believe that the success of inclusion training relies on the ‘true to life’ experience. So, we co-create with you a leadership development journey that will bring impact and visible inclusivity to life.

A leadership development journey co-created with collaboration between Mercer and your organisation will empower your leaders when it comes to DEI.

All-employee ‘let’s talk about race’ sessions

Mercer has expertise in the design and construction of blended learning across key themes — supporting upskilling for employees based on clients’ priorities. Our cohort-based approach can deliver specific outcomes for leaders, managers and employees. These sessions will build the basics and set the foundation for a series of discussions and sessions on topics such as bystander training and inclusive leadership.

The design internal/external DEI transparency and disclosure strategy

A disclosure strategy allows your organisation to develop transparency and accountability to track not just DEI data but ongoing actions and outcomes that are owned by the business in the short and long term.

DEI metrics and dashboards

DEI dashboards can help leaders to identify specific data-driven and impactful actions to drive change and enable them to track progress on the organisation’s DEI aspirations. Mercer can help you establish the DEI data and metrics to focus on. Organisational leaders receive DEI dashboards that include the in-flow, movement and out-flow of your talent in different groupings for each level of the organisation, sliced by gender and race/ethnicity. The dashboards also break down key metrics, such as which types of roles are likely to lead to advancement to higher levels.

Holistic internal and external communication strategy and implementation

Together, we develop thoughtful and systematic engagement appraising employees of your organisation’s DEI journey. Having a transparent and relatable change management approach helps leaders develop communication strategies and invest resources accordingly. Impactful communication drives engagement through clarity, openness and trust in leadership.

Linking executive rewards to DEI goals

Hold leadership accountable by measuring your company’s DEI strategy through data-oriented goals and results, and reward leaders when the strategy is achieved.

Put your employee at the centre of everything you do

Attracting and retaining top talent remains difficult for many organisations. After a turbulent period, now more than ever, organisations must put the employee at the centre of everything they do.

There must be a clear value proposition for employees, and future talent, to answer ‘Why us?’, and to feel they belong and can thrive at work. Thriving employees work in an inclusive, flexible work environment with a strong sense of purpose and valued learning opportunities. An inclusive culture based on diversity equity and inclusion must be flexible and tailored to the employee’s diverse needs, resonating at every stage in the employee experience.

We can support you to co-create a holistic, data driven DEI strategy that fully aligns to your wider employee value proposition:

  • Create staying power through a unique proposition with purpose.
  • Create a differentiated experience.
  • Provide a competitive compensation and benefits offering with true flexibility.

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