Overview
What is DEI?
How can I use this information?
Language Matters
Demographic Custom Fields
Creating a Demographic Custom Field
Active Custom Fields
Question Templates
To learn more about Custom fields, refer to the Custom Fields article in the Knowledge Base
Overview
PeopleGrove is excited to embark on a new corporate initiative that will allow employees of
corporations around the world to mentor students and recent graduates from diverse backgrounds.
This initiative focuses specifically on giving students and new graduates from traditionally oppressed
and marginalized communities an opportunity to network with people who have achieved careers they
aspire to have. To accomplish this initiative, we need to collect diversity data on our platform. As part
of the movement to drive more successful outcomes for traditionally underserved communities on the
platform and in our community, PeopleGrove has made it a goal to gather this information by early 2021
What is DEI?
Diversity is any dimension that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another. It
includes both group/social affiliations and individual differences including:
race
socio-economic status
gender
age
sexual orientation
country of origin
ability
intellectual traditions and perspectives
cultural affiliations
political affiliations
religious affiliations
life experiences
learning and working styles
personality types
Equity is promoting justice, impartiality, and fairness within the procedures, processes, and
distribution of resources by institutions or systems.
Inclusion is a state of being valued, respected, and supported. It’s about focusing on every
individual’s needs and ensuring the right conditions are in place for each person to achieve their full
potential.
Five critical dimensions of the diversity strategy*
Engagement – joining with diversity leaders and champions to diversify the culture.
Inclusive Academic Learning Environment – leveraging differences to achieve educational
outcomes.
Cultural Competence – educating alumni, students, and community partners to work
successfully with differences.
Community – engaging effectively with key stakeholders.
Talent Management – building a representative academic community,
*used with permission from the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine
How can I use this information?
Corporate Partner – Ensure that your employees mentor a diverse workforce of tomorrow’s leaders
via the PeopleGrove platform.
Administrator – Ensure that your platform is benefitting various groups of people and mitigating
unwanted bias.
Enrollment Partner – Ensure the matriculation of marginalized and economically disadvantaged
communities which are more likely to melt.
Language Matters
We’ve extensively reviewed the research on inclusive approaches to collecting demographic data and
used that information to design our data questionnaire. Here’s a sample of the best practices we’ve
incorporated:
Ask communities for their input.
Identify whether you truly need the information; if not, leave it out.
Explain your purpose and privacy policy.
Offer multi-select checkboxes rather than single-select radio buttons.
Allow users to self-describe.
Don’t require a response.
Consider your default settings; what assumptions do they make?
Demographic Custom Field
Lost? Hub Admin → Initial Setup → Custom Fields
Creating a Demographic Custom Field
- To add a demographic custom field, go to Custom Fields under Initial Setup. Click the blue
“Create Custom Field” button in the upper right corner.
