Workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is important not only because it is the right thing for organizations to do but also because it can deliver improved business outcomes: HBR has been writing about that linkage since 1996. Employees also care about DEI; 76% of employees and job seekers said diversity was important when considering job offers. Amidst successful votes for racial equity audits at firms like McDonald’s, Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Home Depot, it is increasingly clear that there is a significant appetite to understand where to focus future efforts and whether DEI initiatives are generating meaningful results.

According to CultureAmp’s 2022 Workplace DEI Landscape report, although most organizations (83%) are collecting DEI data, only a handful are analyzing pay equity (only 15% do it more than once a year) and performance equity (only 29% do it once per cycle, all others less than once per cycle or never). Data sharing is limited: only 34% of companies share DEI data outside of the executive team. Most importantly, less than half of organizations actually used DEI data to make decisions, despite wanting to do so. Organizations keen to make data-driven DEI/HR decisions are hampered by existing HR information systems’ data sharing limitations and static analysis that often relies on analysts manually gathering data and running analyses periodically.

Solution

Dandi is the data analytics platform for DEI, enabling organizations to make data-driven DEI decisions. Dandi starts by pulling in information from any major HR information system or data store, and then allows anyone from CEOs to DEI teams to analyze the organization at a macro level and drill down for specific intersectional insights. Dandi is also launching a user-friendly tool to allow non-technical employees the ability to import new data files/feeds, and define new metrics.

Why We Invested

The founding team at Dandi is one of the strongest we've seen in the DEI space. Building on extensive technical backgrounds and a deep knowledge of the HR tech space, they’ve developed a best-in-class product. Dandi is able to work with all major HR information systems and data stores, and includes powerful dashboards to move from high-level to granular analysis, exportable reports, and regularly refreshed data.

Despite not having officially launched, Dandi has secured several early customers through the founding team’s network and received sustained inbound interest from companies very interested in what they have to offer, building early traction while being extremely capital efficient.

Impact

We believe that Dandi will enable employers to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive by enabling more accurate, more granular, more automated, and more accessible DEI analysis. There is also the potential for Dandi to collect the data to be able to link business performance to DEI at a granular level, which could be game-changing from an impact perspective. Additionally, as Dandi reaches significant scale, its aggregated (and anonymized) dataset will be an enormously valuable source of insights for HR/DEI teams, leadership teams, and policymakers.

We’ve seen Dandi in action and the results are significant for early applications; after one client engaged with Dandi, they identified and reduced gender pay gaps from 10% to 2.5%. After being deployed at another company, voluntary data collection for ethnicities went from 25% to 90%+ in a quarter. At another client, Dandi identified pay gaps between those who identified as primary caregivers and those who didn’t, and was able to support the client in addressing those.