How May Accounting Organizations Help Track Company Diversity?

The purpose of a management accounting organization goes well beyond basic credits and debits and the core tasks of many accounting firms, i.e. preparing financial statements and tax returns. The intention of these professional services firms is to go to the heart of what will make your company successful for many years to come.

One of those biggest metrics for success is diversity. How do you take a concept like this and turn it into something you can track, build, and improve? In this article, we look at diversity as it relates to your accounting organization’s role in the process. 

1. Nail Down Why Diversity Matters to Your Organization

You’ll need a healthy overview of the employees within your organization. What levels do most work? Are any in leadership positions?

This is an exploratory phase where you decide what you need to be tracking. Take your time because it’s from here that an accounting organization starts to hone in on the data.

2. Adjust How You Track Data

Whatever data sets you to come up with, know the purpose of what you’re doing. There are three primary ones behind data compilation.

You will want to diagnose where you’re at as an organization related to diversity. You’ll want to implement and track programs to improve upon that. Last but not least, you’ll need some way of being able to measure the return on that investment. 

3. Determine Your Base

As you look for the best accountant company to handle diversity metrics, you’ll want to use their guidance to develop a good starting point of where you are. This will be an overview of the metrics that are going to matter to you. 

It’s okay if they’re not everything you want them to be starting out. This is just your foundation on which to build. 

4. Take Aim

Once the metrics are determined, and a baseline is set, it’s time to develop meaningful targets. Where do you want to be as an organization with the diversity goals that matter to you? These could be: 

• Hiring more of a certain ethnic community
• Recruiting so the demographics of your company reflect those of your community
• Getting more diverse candidates into leadership positions

You determine the targets. A good accounting organization can help you set meaningful and realistic expectations. 

5. Start Tracking

Tracking progress can only happen if you’ve first implemented approaches to addressing your goals. Once those are established, it’s time to see what is working and what isn’t. Again, this will largely depend on your own creativity as a business, industry, or organization.

6. Report And Adjust

Finally, the accounting organization should be able to compile the results of your efforts into easy-to-follow reports. These reports should help you determine how successful you are as well as highlight any avenues where you can make adjustments to your approach.

Your Accounting Organization Can Help Solve Diversity Issues 

If you’re still wondering if diversity matters there are many articles on the topic including this one. The more you know about diversity, and how it improves your business, the likelihood you’ll be driven to get the outcome you need from all your professional service providers. Higher productivity, staff retention, improved reputation and greater brand awareness are just some of the reasons to push on with diversity.

Choosing the right accounting organization should enable you to determine your shortcomings and opportunities regarding diversity and inclusion. From there, it can also help you build meaningful metrics, implement effective programs, and read data to determine viable paths forward.

Best of luck in improving your diversity practices, it’s the now and the future! For more helpful business and recruiting information, check out some of our additional posts.