THE KEY TO DESIGNING
INCLUSIVE TECH:
Creating diverse andinclusive tech teams

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY– KEY TAKEAWAYS
In this research, we explore the interplay between diversity of workforce and the inclusive design of technologies.
We focus on gender-based and ethnicity-based inclusion and diversity in tech teams across sectors such as financial
services, consumer products and retail, utilities, and healthcare.
Diverse and inclusive tech teams lead to more inclusive tech design• Organizations with advanced inclusive practices* are four times more likely to create inclusive products.
• Two out of five (40%) organizations with advanced inclusive practices involve the end consumer in every step of
the design process, as opposed to only 6% organizations who don’t have advanced inclusive practices.

However, current inclusion and diversity practices are broken• Only 16% of women and ethnic-minority tech employees believe that they are well represented in tech teams.
• 85% of leadership executives believe their organizations provide equitable opportunities for career development andpromotions to every employee, but only 19% of women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions agree.
• 75% of leadership executives believe that women and ethnic minorities feel a sense of belonging in their organizations,but only 24% of women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions agree.
• The perception gap between leadership executives and women and ethnic minorities regarding various inclusion
processes and measures is narrower for organizations with an inclusive culture.

Consumers are aware of tech-based discrimination – and many have experienced it• 76% of ethnic-minority consumers expect organizations to develop technologies that can be used by a diverse
set of consumers.
• Nearly 50% of women from ethnic minorities were offered lower credit facility for certain banking products.
• 40% of ethnic-minority consumers faced difficulty in accessing information that was relevant to their gender/ethnicity
while using healthcare services online.

How can organizations move towards greater inclusion in tech teams and tech products?
• Develop robust processes, practices, and value systems that enable inclusion– Focus on inclusive language, assess your referral, and culture fit criteria for inclusive sourcing and hiring.
– Build transparency and greater equity in career progression and allotment of career opportunities.
– Reduce microaggressions and create healthy environments.
• Drive fairness in AI systems and reduce algorithmic bias
– Conduct an impact-assessment analysis for algorithms and automated decisions.
– Screen datasets used to train AI systems for bias and audit them regularly.
• Lay down the technological and data foundations for fostering inclusion– Use tools and tech effectively to build greater inclusion.
– Enhance data-collection and management practices for better tracking of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
• Keep diverse users at the heart of designing inclusive tech/digital products and services– Ensure women and ethnic minorities play a critical role in the design and development of digital technologies.
– Incorporate checks and balances to ensure tech design and tech infrastructure are inclusive.

* Top-25-percentile organizations that have strong inclusive culture and practices compared to their peers.
2

The key to designing inclusive tech

INTRODUCTION
Digital technologies are increasingly embedded in all aspectsof human life. With the integration of these technologies into
products and services, exclusionary and biased outputs arealso increasingly common, including biases and discriminationfrom AI-enabled systems. For example:
An AI hiring tool developed by a large global technology
company and later abandoned, was trained using a maledominated dataset. As a result, it was biased against womenand excluded applications from two women’s colleges. The
US Federal Reserve (the Fed, the US central bank) noted thatsimilar algorithmic biases in financial services may lead toa higher rate of credit denial for women, especially African
American women.1

Understanding diversity, equity, and inclusion
While the terms are often used interchangeably, it is worth
pointing out the differences:
Diversity refers to the presence of differences in a given
environment/setting. In the context of a tech team or the
workplace, it would generally refer to the presence of
persons from diverse backgrounds, including (but not limitedto) gender identity, ethnicity3 (race, religion, nationality, etc.),
socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, physical or mental
ability, and learning style.

As the use of new technologies become pervasive, questionsof non-inclusive technology and lack of diversity in techteams are gaining prominence. In this research, we explore
the interplay between diversity of workforce and theinclusive design5 of technologies.
For the purpose of this study, we focus broadly on genderbased and ethnicity-based inclusion and diversity intechnologies and tech teams. We asked respondents toshare their gender identity i.e., the personal conception ofthemselves as opposed to what they were assigned at birth.
To capture their ethnic identities, we asked whether or not
the respondents identified themselves as belonging to an
ethnic-minority6 or protected community.
We recognize that there are many forms of discrimination likeexclusion due to disability, sexual orientation, age, education,etc. In this research, we explore two forms of exclusion i.e.,
exclusion due to gender and ethnicity.

Racial bias was discovered in a major healthcare riskassessment algorithm that is used by over 200m people in
the US. The system reportedly classified Black patients as
being at lower risk on average than white patients, despite
the former having a higher incidence of chronic illness, as thedataset administered to the system was insufficiently diverse.
This made the AI less likely to flag eligible Black patients forhigh-risk care management.2
Against this backdrop, there has been a rising demand for
greater diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workforce,
especially in technology teams that develop and deploy thetechnologies with which end users interact.

Equity refers to the commitment to promoting fairtreatment, access, and opportunity within processes,
procedures, and systems. The principle of equity
acknowledges that there are historically under-served
and under-represented groups and that there is a need to
identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented their fullparticipation. In the workplace, this translates to reducing
wage gaps between different groups, providing equal work
opportunities among other similar actions.
Inclusion is about creating a sense of belonging, feelingvalued and respected in the workplace, especially for underserved and under-represented groups.4

We conducted a twofold global research study covering largeorganizations across nine countries in key consumer-facing
industries (such as financial services, consumer products andretail, utilities, and healthcare):• To capture the organizational perspective, we conducted asurvey of 1,000 employees– 500 leadership executives from various functionalgroups in the organization (such as strategy,
recruitment, customer engagement, technology,
inclusion and diversity teams)– 500 employees in non-supervisory positions fromtechnology teams in the same organization (such as
UX/UI developers/designers, AI/data-science/analytics
teams)• To capture the end-user perspective, we also conducted asurvey of 5,000 consumers.

3

We also carried out qualitative research, including:Broadly, this report explores four themes:• Focus-group discussions with diverse user groups inGermany, the US, and the UK

1.

• Interviews with professors and researchers in design
institutes, all involved in the area of inclusive design/
diversity and inclusion

2. Current inclusion and diversity practices are broken, andleadership is unaware• Interviews with industry executives belonging toleadership teams (including women and ethnic minorities),and employees (especially women and ethnic minorities)
working in technology teams.

Diverse and inclusive tech teams lead to more inclusive
tech design

3. Consumers are not only aware of tech-based
discrimination, but have personally experienced it
4. Organizations can build more inclusive tech teams anddesign inclusive tech products by learning from strong
performers.
This report is special to us as we work to make Capgemini
more inclusive and diverse.

Why is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) important?
DEI is not a purely ethical matter but also a business one:
• Increased employee retention and engagement: A study
indicates that 83% of millennials feel they are engaged
at work when they believe the organization fosters an
inclusive culture.7 Disengaged employees owing to a
non-inclusive workplace cost US companies an estimated$450bn­–$550bn every year through lost productivity.8• Increased employee hiring: Diversity and inclusivity canalso be the difference between whether or not someone
wants to work for an organization. About one in three
job seekers would not apply at an organization that lacks
diversity among its workforce.9 Another finding is thatthree in 10 non-white high-tech workers in the US have lefta job because of a lack of diversity or a hostile culture in
their organization.10• Enhanced revenue and profit: DEI has a ripple effect onrevenue and profitability. In fact, companies with aboveaverage total diversity had both 19 percentage points
higher innovation revenues and 9 percentage points higher
profit margins, on average.11 Another finding indicates4

The key to designing inclusive techthat organizations with the most significant gaps between
the experiences of white and ethnic-minority employees
averaged 8.6% revenue growth annually, while companies
with the smallest gap averaged 11.1% growth.12 In addition,organizations ranking highly in terms of gender diversity
outperform their competition by 15% on average. And
those who are ethnically diverse do better than theircompetitors, by 35%.13• Heightened creativity and innovation: A diverse
workforce brings more creativity and distinctive ideas tothe table and can critically examine a task on many levels
and understand consumers from diverse backgrounds.
By developing products catering to a larger consumer
base, organizations can boost efficiency, productivity,and consumer satisfaction. Also, inclusive companies are
1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in theirrespective markets.14• Better brand value: DEI for an organization plays a vitalrole in building and maintaining an outstanding reputation,
avoiding bad press and lawsuits.

Understanding inclusive design
Figure 1: What is Inclusive Design?

Inclusive design
Simple,intuitive andeasy to use

Accessible
for physicallyand cognitively
challenged

Caters to fullrange of humandiversity concerning
language, culture,gender, age, and anyother form of humandiﬀerence

The inclusive design methodology aims to create solutions that can be used by a diverse groupof people. In other words, it caters to the full range of human diversity. In this report, whilereferring to inclusive design, we are primarily focused on and speak of inclusive design ofdigital products, services and digital technologies (for example, apps, websites, online forms,
AI-enabled systems, recommendation engines, conversational interfaces, among others).

“Inclusive design is design that takes into
consideration a variety of human differences. One
aspect of it is to design for people with disabilities
and that is about accessibility. But inclusive design isalso about designing for other human differences: ingender, in sexual orientation, in language and culture,in race. People are different in a number of ways.
Designing to include the needs of all these people –that is what inclusive design is.”Dr. Sambhavi Chandrashekar
D2L Corporation, a learning technology company
Source: Capgemini Research Institute analysis.

5

1 – Diverse andinclusive techteams lead tomore inclusive
tech design
Strong workplace inclusion
practices lead to more
inclusive design practices
In this study, we set out to understand the relationshipbetween inclusive technology and inclusive and diverse
teams. We found a clear and direct positive correlation15
of 0.71 between organizations who performed strongly
in inclusive culture and practices, and those that scoredhighly in inclusive design practices. Dr. Matteo Zallio, Marie
Skłodowska-Curie Senior Research Fellow in Inclusive Design
at the University of Cambridge, outlines the importance ofa collaborative culture and workplace: “Building inclusivetechnologies and solutions has an intrinsic relationshipwith how people from diverse backgrounds within the tech
team feel in the workplace. An improved sense of belonging
and community for teams of people will lead to better
technological outcomes and solutions.”

6

The key to designing inclusive tech

Exhibit 1: What makes an organization excel in workplace-inclusion practices and inclusive design practices?
We analyzed the responses from women and ethnic-minority tech employees and scored organizations on two dimensions:(1) inclusive culture and practices and (2) inclusive design practices.

Inclusive
culture andpractices• Equal opportunity to grow in the organization• Training and awareness for inclusive leadership• Robust grievance-redressal mechanism for gender/ethnicity-based discrimination• Comfort in sharing personal experiences with leadership and peers• Sense of inclusion, belonging and respect from their leadership and teams

Inclusive
designpractices• Awareness and importance of inclusive design within the organization andthroughout the product development process• View on whether digital products and the design process were inclusive• Level of end-user/consumer involvement in digital design and development process• Level of checks/balances to minimize ethnicity and gender-based exclusions

Based on the above-mentioned dimensions, we classified the organizations into two cohorts
1.

Organizations with an inclusive culture: Top-25-percentile
organizations in the first dimension (i.e., organizations
that have strong inclusive culture and practices comparedto their peers. The remaining 316 organizations havebeen classified as “The Rest”).

2. Inclusion Frontrunners: A small group of organizations(10% of the sample) who are performing strongly on bothdimensions: culture and practices, as well as inclusive
design practices.

“Building inclusive technologies and solutions has an intrinsic
relationship with how people from diverse backgrounds within
the tech team feel in the workplace. An improved sense of
belonging and community for teams of people will lead tobetter technological outcomes and solutions.”
Dr. Matteo Zallio
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Senior Fellow in Inclusive
Design at the University of Cambridge

7

knowledge, technological inclusion is perceived as an unnecessaryand expensive choice. However, more people have started
recognizing the value-added and benefits of inclusive design. Thistransformation is being observed in organizations that support
DEI initiatives and include diverse people. These people, in turn,offer more varied viewpoints and more knowledge on the issues,
thereby providing better solutions.”

To further test the correlation result, we:• Analyzed survey responses along two dimensions: (1)inclusion in workplace culture and practices and (2)inclusive design practices (see Exhibit 1, What makes anorganization excel in workplace inclusion practices andinclusive design practices?).
Mario Girasole, executive vice president for Regulatory,
Institutional, and Public Relations at TIM Brazil, an Italian
telecommunications multinational company, outlines therelationship between inclusion in the workplace and inclusive
design practices: “One of the main barriers to adopting inclusive
design of digital technologies is lack of information. Without

As Figure 2 shows, organizations with an inclusive culture are
more likely to use inclusive design practices, such as having awell-defined definition of inclusive design that governs theirproduct development (34% for those with an inclusive culturecompared to 11% for The Rest).

Figure 2: Organizations with an inclusive culture have better inclusive design practices% of organizations following inclusive design practices, based on responses from womenand ethnic minorities
39%
34%

11%

10%

Our digital products
are inclusive ofgender,ethnicity-based
considerations

32%

Inclusive design is welldeﬁned in myorganization and wehave inclusive designprinciples that govern
our development
processes

30%

10%

8%

There is a high levelof awareness of
inclusive design inmy organization

Organizations with an inclusive culture29%

My organization isinterested in making
our digital products
more inclusive

11%

Inclusive design ofdigital tech is an
importantconsideration for
my organization

The Rest

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=418 ethnicminority and women employees in tech functions from N=418 organizations under consideration with N=102 organizations withan inclusive culture.

Organizations with advanced inclusive
practices are 4 times more likely tocreate inclusive products.

8

The key to designing inclusive techOrganizations with an inclusive culture have also taken steps
to ensure product design considers ethnic minorities andwomen, as Figure 3 shows:• More than half (53%) have human interaction as a majorpart of their design and development process (comparedto just 14% of The Rest)• 40% involve the consumer in their design and development
process compared to just 6% of The Rest.

Figure 3: Organizations with an inclusive culture are more sensitive to the inclusion of women and ethnic minorities intheir technology applications

53%% of organizations following inclusive design practices, based on responses fromwomen and ethnic minorities

40%
31%
24%
14%

13%
8%

6%
Human-in-the-loop orother humaninteraction-based
design forms a majorpart of the design anddevelopment process

Consumers are involved in thedesign and development
process at every step of theprocess

Consumer-facing
technology team isinclusive and diverse as
it relates to gender andethnicities

Organizations with an inclusive culture

Design anddevelopment has
adequate checks orbalances that ensureethnicity andgender-based exclusions
are minimized/removed

The Rest

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=418 ethnicminority and women employees in tech functions from N=418 organization under consideration with N=102 organizations withan inclusive culture.

40%of organizations with inclusive culture
involve consumers in every step of thedesign process, compared to only

6% of the rest of the organizations.
9Organizations with an inclusive culture believe strongly in adiverse workforce to enable inclusive product design. For e.g.,nearly half believe that edge use cases (situations that occur

at extreme operating parameters) are better understood intech teams that are diverse and inclusive. This is compared to
one in five of their peers (see Figure 4):

Figure 4: One in three inclusive organizations agree that involvement of women and ethnic minorities in teams bringsin different perspectives on design% of organizations agreeing with the following statements
45%
34%

33%

20%

20%

19%
14%

The understanding ofedge use cases forinclusive design gets
redeﬁned when diversity
and inclusion is promoted
within tech teams

The involvement of womenand ethnic minorities ensurethat the backend algorithm of
the digital products are more
inclusive

The involvement of more
women and ethnic
minorities bring in
diﬀerent and criticalperspectives on design,
leading to more inclusivity

Organizations with an inclusive culture

15%

Women and ethnic
minorities are well
represented in thetech teams that
produce digitalproducts

The Rest

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=418 ethnicminority and women employees in tech functions from N=418 organization under consideration with N=102 organizations withan inclusive culture.

“Who are we including, who are we excluding and what factors
have impacted our decision making process? How have we tested
that our products have an inclusive design? What assumptions
have we made? Have we consulted or been advised by the groups
we are aiming to include – or are we making decisions on theirbehalf? In the event that we don’t have a diverse employee base tohelp us keep diversity, inclusion and antiracism front of mind when
we enter the design stage – are we keeping the diversity of out
consumer base in mind to compensate for that?”
Kit Ahweyevu,
CEO of Mindweaver(A firm focused on supporting organisations to bring diversity
and antiracism to emerging technology by building andembedding diverse teams and culture change).
10

The key to designing inclusive techInclusive design is still a rare phenomenon
Our survey findings indicate that, for tech employees(including women and ethnic minorities), traditional design
processes are seen as giving short shrift to DEI:

Only 16% of all tech employees say that their digital products
are inclusive of gender, and ethnicity-based considerations.
Similarly, only a small share of tech employees, including
women and ethnic minorities, believe that they are well
represented in tech teams that produce digital products (seeFigure 5).

Figure 5: Inclusive design practices – a rare phenomenon% of organizations practicing inclusive design
53%

55%
47% 46%

We involve people from
diﬀerent communities
to test any assumptions
and biases

We involve a diverse
range of end-users
in our design,
testing & marketing
All tech employees

16% 17%

17% 16%

Our digital products areinclusive of gender, andethnicity-based
considerations

Women and ethnic minorities
are well represented in thetech teams that produce
digital products

Women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=500
organizations, with N=500 tech employees, including N=418 women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions.

112 – Current inclusion anddiversity practices are broken
Leadership perceives processes and practices to be
inclusive; diverse employees in tech teams disagree
Our research has revealed a gap between leadership’s
positive perception of inclusion in the workplace and theharsh reality experienced by ethnic-minority and women techemployees. Eighty-one percent of the leadership executives
believe that leaders, managers, recruiters, and supervisors
undergo rigorous and periodic bias training and are assigned
personal accountability for systematically reducing microinequities16 and promoting inclusive leadership. However,
only 27% of women and ethnic-minority employees in techfunctions agree that this is the case.
Similarly, 85% of leadership executives believe that theirorganizations provide equitable opportunities for careerdevelopment and promotions to every employee, but only

18% of women and ethnic-minority employees in techfunctions concur (see Figure 6). This perception gap createsa significant problem, with leadership executives believing
progress is being made but on-the-ground employees
being pessimistic about the real picture. “The challenge isthat once women and candidates from minority groups join
an organization, they still might not find the work conditions
inclusive,” explains Prof. Bishakha Majumdar of Indian Instituteof Management (IIM) Visakhapatnam. “There is a chance thatthey are going to be dissatisfied, performance is going to suffer
and they’re going to drop out. This further reinforces the old myththat these people were only taken in for diversity’s sake, and they
were otherwise unfit for the work demands.”

85%
of leadership executives believe that
their organizations provide equitable
opportunities for career development
to every employee, but only

18% women and ethnic-minority techemployees agree.

12

The key to designing inclusive techFigure 6: Leadership rates inclusion practices highly; women and ethnic minorities in tech teams disagree

To what extent do you agree with the following statements - leadership executives vs women andethnic-minority employees
My organization provides equitable opportunities tocareer development and promotions to every employee.
My organization has a holistic talent strategy thatutilizes data to help employees mitigate implicit biases
at employee touch-point.

85%
18%
82%
20%

Leadership, managers, recruiters, and supervisors undergo
rigorous and periodic bias training and are assigned personalaccountability systematically reducing microinequities andpromoting inclusive leadership.
There is a robust grievance redressal mechanism forcomplaints pertaining to gender, or ethnicity-based
discrimination or harassment.
My organization conducts regular and eﬀective training
programs that are aimed at promoting inclusion and diversity.
Employees from diverse backgrounds intermingle freely within
the organization.
Discriminatory comments or jokes are not tolerated at
the workplace.
Leadership executives

81%
27%

81%
18%
77%
14%
77%
22%
72%
38%

Women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March-April 2021, N = 500
organizations, with 500 leadership executives; N=418 women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated some existing issues
around women and ethnic-minority employees. Women were
faced with a significant challenge of home care and keeping
their jobs, which resulted in some being forced to leave
employment. In the US, since the onset of the pandemic,
400,000 more women than men have left the workforce.
The unemployment rate of Hispanic women, at 6.5%, is morethan double that of Hispanic men. In December 2020, womenaccounted for all net job losses, while men achieved job
gains.17 In the EU, the unemployment rate among women roseby 1.1 percentage points since February 2020, while men saw

a 0.7-percentage-point increase. A survey in Europe foundthat 4% of women who lost their jobs during the pandemic
stopped looking for work, compared with just 1% of men.
Even when women were able to keep their jobs, many wereforced to cut back on their hours because of an increase in
caregiving responsibilities. Analysis shows that, in Germany,
wages for women declined by 8.6% during the first half of2020, which was almost twice the fall experienced by men. In
the UK, women saw their earnings decline by 12.9%, nearly
double the drop relative to men.18

13

Tech employees from diverse backgrounds do notexperience a sense of belonging in the workplace
This perception gap between the top of the organization andon-the-ground employees is wide:grow in the organization, but only 28% of women andethnic-minority employees in tech functions agree.

• 75% of leadership executives believe that women andethnic minorities feel a sense of belonging in theirorganizations, but only 24% of women and ethnic-minority
employees in tech functions feel this to be the case.

• 53% of women and ethnic minorities feel comfortable
sharing personal experiences with other employees andpeers, whereas only 9% of them feel the same comfort
level with the leadership executives (see Figure 7).

• Nearly 70% of leadership executives believe that womenand ethnic minorities are given an equal opportunity to

Leadership executives need to go beyond just communicating
to build tangible engagement and trust on matters ofinclusion.

Figure 7: Leadership believes that employees have a strong sense of belonging; women and employees from ethnic
minorities in tech functions disagree

To what extent do you agree with the following statements - leadership executives vs women andethnic-minority employees
Women and ethnic minorities feel a sense of belonging in
my organization

75%
24%

Women and ethnic minorities feel included in the organization
and are duly respected

71%
22%

Women and ethnic minorities are given an equal opportunity togrow in the organization.

68%
28%

Women and ethnic minorities feel included within their teams
and duly respected by their fellow colleagues and team members

64%
56%

Women and ethnic minorities are comfortable sharing
personal experiences about their backgrounds with theirfellow employees
Women and ethnic minorities are comfortable sharing personal
experiences about their backgrounds with the leadership
Leadership executives

47%
53%
28%
9%

Women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=500
organizations, with 500 leadership executives; N=418 women and ethnic-minority employees in tech functions.

14

The key to designing inclusive tech

The perception gap between leadership and women andethnic-minority tech employees is narrower inorganizations with an inclusive culture
Our findings suggest that, although there exists a perception
gap between leadership executives and women and ethnic
minorities regarding various inclusion processes andmeasures, it is narrower for organizations with an inclusive
culture. This means that women and ethnic minorities
agree with the leadership executives to a larger extent inorganizations with an inclusive culture on various practices.

Figure 8, below, illustrates the perception gap related
to inclusion measures in organizations, e.g., the gap inleadership executives and women/ethnic-minority perception
related to work-life balance and remote working is 21% fororganizations with an inclusive culture, compared to 44% for
The Rest.

Figure 8: The perception gap regarding inclusion practices is lower for organizations with inclusive cultures

Perception gap on inclusive practices in the organization(% points)
44%
37%

21%

8%

Work-life balance, ﬂexibility in work timings, andremote working is actively promoted

Feedback is frequently collected from womenand ethnic minorities employees and acted upon

Perception gap, leadership executives vs women and ethic minorities, Organizations with an inclusive culture
Perception gap, leadership executives vs women and ethic minorities, The Rest
Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=418 ethnicminority and women employees in tech functions from N=102 organizations with an inclusive culture.

75%of leadership executives believe that women and ethnic
minorities feel a sense of belonging in their organizations, but
only 24% of women and ethnic-minority tech employees agree.
15

This difference in perception between inclusive organizations
and The Rest is also reflected in practices related to career
growth, as well as learning and development practices.
• Figure 9 shows women and ethnic minorities from
inclusive organizations agree to a greater extent with theirleadership executives on career-growth measures such asaccess to career-enhancing networks, employee resourcegroups, etc.
• The perception gap related to engaging employees
through timely and personalized learning programs is 13%
for inclusive organizations, compared to 23% for noninclusive ones.

Figure 9: The perception gap for measures related to career growth is narrower for organizations withinclusive cultures

Perception gap career growth measures in the organization(% points)
57%

54%

55%

38%
33%

Women and ethnic minorities haveequal access to career-enhancing
network and mentorship as therest of the employees

Women and ethnic minorities abeneﬁtequally from interventions to increase
career capital as the rest of theemployees

31%

Women and ethnic minorities haveequal access to employee resources
groups and human resources as therest of the employees

Perception gap, leadership executives vs women and ethic minorities, Organizations with an inclusive culture
Perception gap, leadership executives vs women and ethic minorities, The Rest
Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=418 ethnicminority and women employees in tech functions from N=102 organizations with an inclusive culture.

The same can also be said for the perception gap relating to practices around learning, development, and promotions inorganizations with an inclusive culture vs The Rest.

16

The key to designing inclusive tech

22%
Percentage of Black tech employeesthat feel they have an equal opportunity
to grow.

Opportunity gaps exist for ethnic-minority and womentech employees
Women and ethnic-minority employees from tech functions
shared their experiences of non-inclusive tools during thehiring and attrition stages:• A 32-year-old man of Middle Eastern origin from the UK,
who worked as a technology recruiter and is currently selfemployed, told us: “There is filtering out of certain names
because there is an implicit bias against certain backgrounds.”• A woman employee, who is an application architectand manager from a multinational consumer-goods
corporation told us: “When our leadership network follows up
with ethnic-minority employees who are leaving, they realizethat most of them believe that they are not getting promoted
on time or being valued.”• Another woman software engineer from a large high-techorganization in Germany says: “Salary discrimination is ahuge problem in Europe and Germany, in my company as well.
Some of my co-workers, mostly guys, have a higher salary thanme just because I am a woman.”Several studies show that mothers in the workforce
experience additional disadvantages compared to women
who are not mothers. Mothers in the US who work full time
are paid $18,000 less annually on average than fathers. The
financial discrepancy experienced by mothers is also greater
for women of color.19
Furthermore, when we explored the question of equal
opportunities at work, we found:• Only around one in five (22%) Black tech employees feelthey have an equal opportunity to grow• In product-management/design roles, only 8% of Blacktech employees felt that they had equal opportunities togrow as compared to 36% of the rest of ethnic-minority
tech employees• In the 26-50 age group (who make up the majority of theworking population), only 18% of Black tech employees
feel that they have equal opportunities to grow, as
compared to 28% of the rest of ethnic-minority techemployees“The challenge is that once women and candidates from minority
groups join an organization, they still might not find the work
conditions inclusive. There is a chance that they are going to bedissatisfied, performance is going to suffer, and they’re going todrop out. This further reinforces the old myth that these people
were only taken in for diversity’s sake, and they were otherwise
unfit for the work demands.”
Prof. Bishakha Majumdar
Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Visakhapatnam.

17

Organizations report low diversity across tech teams
A certain level of representation of women and ethnicminority groups in organizations is critical to bringing culturalchanges. However, women and ethnic minorities are poorly
represented in IT and tech teams (Figure 10). When we
asked a data engineer from a leading insurance company
how diverse her team was, she said: “To be honest, it’s not at
all diverse. I was the only woman in my team and now it is only
slowly expanding.” She goes on to say: “I have worked in various
companies and most of the time, I was the only woman in theteam.”

1.

Organizations, across all functions/teams, comprisenearly 30% women employees and 22% ethnic minorities.

2. However, in IT/tech teams, only one in five employees
is a woman, and one in six is from an ethnic-minority.
This drops even further in cybersecurity teams, where
only one in eight employees is a woman or belongs to an
ethnic-minority.

Figure 10: Women and ethnic-minority employees are underrepresented in technology teams compared to theiroverall standing

Representation of women and ethnic minorities in organizations
29%
22%

21%
16%

Across all functions
and teams in theorganization

In the IT/tech teams

16%

13%

In ProductManagement, Product
Design, UI/UX Research& Design teams
Women

15%

12%

In theAI/Analytics/Data
Science/Data
Management teams

12% 12%In thecybersecurity
teams

Ethnic Minorities

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=500
leadership executives from 500 organizations.

“To be honest, my team is not at all diverse. I was
the only woman in my team and now it is only slowly
expanding. I have worked in various companies andmost of the time, I was the only woman in the team.”
A data engineer
from a leading insurance company

18

The key to designing inclusive techare indeed grossly under-represented in technology teams
across countries, with most countries with representation
gaps of nearly 30 percentage points (Figure 11).

Further, we compared the representation of women in IT/
tech teams in our survey to the share of women in the totallabor force in our surveyed countries. We found that women

Figure 11: Women in tech teams are grossly under-represented

Representation of women in labor force vs % of women in tech teams, by country
48%

48%

21%

France47%

22%

Sweden

46%

47%

20%

UK

20%

20%

Australia

Spain

Labor force, female (% of total labor force)

46%

46%

23%

Germany

43%

20%

US

21%

Italy

20% 20%India% of women in IT/tech teams from survey

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=500
leadership executives from 500 organizations, World Bank report on World Development Indicators, May 2021.
Employees from ethnic-minority communities in IT/
technology teams seem to be more representative of, oreven outstrip, overall ethnic-minority populations for many
geographies (e.g., 12.8%20 ethnic-minority representationin the overall population in Germany vs 17% ethnic-minority
representation in IT/tech teams as per our survey findings).
However, in some countries, the representation is not
representative of the country demographic. For example,
in the US, ethnic-minority employees are underrepresented
to an extent of 24 percentage points (40% ethnic-minority
representation nationwide21 vs 16% in IT/tech teams in our
survey findings). This gap also exists in Australia, Sweden,and India, although not to the same extent as in the US. The
discussion around ethnic-minority representation also shows
greater nuances by community, as some ethnic-minority
communities may be more or less represented; this needs tobe considered when devising policies and targets for diversity
and inclusion within tech teams. For example, in the US, 53%
of Asian women work in management in professional andrelated occupations, compared to 37% Black women, and
29% Hispanic women.22
As we have seen, this overall lack of diversity is compounded
by a lack of inclusive culture and practices in organizations.

21%
Percentage of women in IT/tech teams

19

3- Consumers are aware oftech-based discrimination – andmany have experienced it
In the previous section, we examined women and ethnic-minority tech employees’ perspectives on diversity and inclusion.
Here, we explore the criticality of inclusive technologies from the consumer’s standpoint. Our findings suggest that consumers
have not only experienced how technologies can be discriminatory in several ways, but also have a very clear expectation fororganizations to build more inclusive digital products and services.

Women and ethnic-minority consumers have had
discriminatory experiences with technology
across sectors
Based on our consumer research and focus-group discussions
we held with women and ethnic minorities, we found thatmany of them had experienced tech-based discrimination
first-hand.
A 29-year-old Black woman from the US, who works for a
nonprofit public health company, said: “On Facebook, if I
show up in a friend’s photo, I am incorrectly tagged as any Black
person, regardless of gender or race. I feel like Facebook doesn’t
distinguish between Black people and their algorithm is not
exposed to enough diverse users.”

Inequity in facial-recognition algorithms is well documented.
In the Gender Shades project, an intersectional approach
was applied to assess three gender-classification algorithms,
including those developed by IBM and Microsoft. Subjects
were grouped into four categories: darker-skinned females;darker-skinned males; lighter-skinned females; and lighterskinned males. All three algorithms performed worst on
darker-skinned females, with error rates up to 34% higher
than for lighter-skinned males.23“On Facebook, if I show up in a friend’s
photo, I am incorrectly tagged as any
Black person, regardless of genderor race. I feel like Facebook doesn’t
distinguish between Black people andtheir algorithm is not exposed to enoughdiverse users.”
A 29-year-old
Black woman from the US

20

The key to designing inclusive techA 27-year-old Black man from Germany described how
online searches can reinforce stereotypes: “Online searchesof pictures of African kids show only hungry and poor kids inpoverty. But a similar search for European kids only shows happy
faces.”
The following points outline the discriminatory events
that concern consumers in different sectors, from financial
services to healthcare:• Financial services: As per our survey, 50% percent of
ethnic minorities, on average, believe they were offered
lower credit online for certain banking products, comparedto 28% of consumers who are not from ethnic-minority
communities. It is well-established that better creditscores often lead to higher credit limits. Complex andopaque algorithms are used to make a variety of thesedecisions often, often without revealing the kinds ofinformation included in the calculus. A 2007 report fromthe Federal Reserve found that Blacks and Hispanics
had lower credit scores than Whites and Asians, and that
“residing in low-income or predominantly minority census
tracts” is a predictor of low credit scores. As people arelikely to have friends and family that live nearby and areof the same ethnicity, using social networks to rate their
creditworthiness could reintroduce factors that creditors
aren’t allowed to ordinarily consider,24 which could
potentially explain the worrying insight from our survey.
Nearly 40% of ethnic-minority consumers believe they
were not shown premium/high-end options for financial
products, such as home/education loans, insurance, etc.,
compared to 16% of consumers not belonging to ethnicminority communities. Sixty three percent consumers fromethnic-minority communities faced difficulty in filling forms

due to their gender/ethnicity not being in the available
options while using banking products and services such as
home/education loans, credit cards etc. on apps/websites.
Also, nearly 50% of women from ethnic minorities were
offered lower credit line, compared to men not fromethnic-minority communities.
• Consumer products and retail: On average, 40% of ethnic
minorities believe they were not shown premium or highend luxury items while shopping online. A similar share ofwomen belonging to ethnic-minority communities were
not shown premium items while shopping online. This
compares to 27% of consumers not from ethnic-minority
communities. Another 30% of ethnic minorities sharedthat they faced chatbots/voicebots that used raciallybiased/sexist terminology during their interactions. The
algorithm for these bots is usually designed to pick up
publicly available statements and failed to differentiate
between what is and is not offensive.
• Healthcare: Our survey reveals that 43% of womenand consumers from ethnic-minority communities were
not shown/denied access to healthcare facilities inhigh-end localities or offering very specialized services,compared to 30% of consumers not from ethnic-minority
communities. Nearly 40% women and consumers fromethnic-minority communities faced difficulty in accessing
information that was relevant to their gender/ethnicity
while using healthcare services online (e.g., heart-attack
symptoms may differ between men and women, yetrecommendations are based largely on symptoms ofmen). This compares to 22% men not belonging to ethnicminority communities.

Most consumers are perturbed with their discriminatory
experiences with technology
Our survey shows that women and ethnic-minority
consumers are concerned about different tech-based biases
that have crept into digital and AI-based technologies, as
Figure 12 shows:• 60% of women and ethnic-minority consumers areconcerned about online image searches having an ethnicbias• 74% of this group are concerned about full-body scanners
at airports more frequently flagging women of color(based on their typical hairstyles, such as afros and braids).
An article by ProPublica reported that the full-bodyscanners that have become standard at airports across the
US are prone to false alarms for hairstyles popular among

women of color. The article shared the experience of aBlack woman who travels frequently for work in the US,
and almost every time she steps out of an airport bodyscanner, security screeners pull her aside and run theirfingers through her hair (known as a “hair pat-down”, apractice reported by many Black women in the past).25
Other consumers are not too different in their concerns
about discriminatory digital tech, as Figure 12 confirms:• 63% of general consumers are concerned about forms
believe they being auto populated with a specific gender.
• 53% of general consumers are concerned about socialmedia platforms not filtering out false information or
misinformation targeting ethnic-minority communities.

21

Figure 12: More than six in 10 ethnic-minority and women consumers feel that certain filters and photo-editing apps
work better for specific skin tones% of consumers concerned about discrimination due to the use of digital technologies
Full body scanners at airports more frequently ﬂagging womenof colour based on their hairstyles like afros, braids

74%
69%

Forms being auto populated with a speciﬁc gender

73%
63%

Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana having default female
names and female voices

61%
58%

Certain ﬁlters and photo editing apps working better for speciﬁcskin tones

63%
60%

Image searches on browsers like Google having an ethnic bias
(e.g. search for black teenagers mostly results in mugshots)

60%
56%

Social media and content platforms not ﬁltering out false
information or misinformation by users targeted atminority communities

57%
53%

Social media platforms like Facebook limiting certain
advertisements (e.g. housing based on ethnicity and jobs
based on gender)

56%
52%

Ethnic minorities and women

Other consumers

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, inclusive design of technologies consumer survey, March–April 2021; N=5,000 consumers
including 4000 women and ethnic-minority consumers.

A number of other consumers from our focus-group
discussions revealed their experiences with tech-based
discrimination:• A 32-year-old Middle Eastern man from the UK said:“Minorities such as me, with beards and facial hair, hadproblems with biometric scanning and facial-recognition
software at airport stores. It wasn’t designed to pick up people
with facial hair. It is being rectified now.”• A 26-year-old Asian woman from US said: “Since I am from
China, every time my parents or I use an Alexa or Google voicesearch, it interprets incorrectly. It discourages me from using
this technology; I would rather type.”22

The key to designing inclusive tech

In addition, certain consumers also have a perception that
their data could be used to impact them negatively:• 76% of gender non-binary or non-disclosed consumers
from our survey thought their data could be used tonegatively impact their employment opportunities.
• 66% of ethnic-minority consumers (including Asian, Black,
Hispanic/Latino, Middle Eastern) concur.
This concern creates a hesitancy in personal-data sharing bycertain segments of consumers.

“Since I am from China, every time myparents or I use an Alexa or Google
voice search, it interprets incorrectly.
It discourages me from using thistechnology; I would rather type.”
A 26-year-old
Asian woman consumer from US

Case study: All about the customer experience
SSE, a multinational energy company based in Scotland,
wanted to transform its customer-facing website by focusing
on a more user-centered design to deliver the best possible
experience to all customers.

research, concept-testing, guerrilla testing, prototyping,and usability testing• Develop personas to represent customers and help embed
these into the business

Objectives:• Collaboratively develop a design-pattern library to improvethe consistency of design across projects• Embrace inclusive design to deliver an accessible service toall customers• Conduct accessibility testing with real customers forfurther improvement.

• Acquire new customers through digital touchpoints

Impact:• Retain existing customers.

• 200% increase in conversions through the phone andbroadband sign-up process

Method:• Run workshops with senior stakeholders to establish andevolve business objectives and KPIs
• Train and mentor design team in all aspects of user
experience• Execute collaborative design sprints with design teamand business stakeholders through phases of discovery• Ease of access of all essential information to all customers• Easy and automated meter-reading submission process forcustomers• Collaboration across different parts of the business foruser-centered design and delivery.26

74%
Percentage of women and consumers
from ethnic-minority communities
being concerned about full-bodyscanners at airports more frequently
flagging women of color (based on theirhairstyles, such as afros and braids).
23

Consumers expect organizations to build
inclusive technologies• 72% of ethnic-minority and women consumers expectorganizations to consult with diverse user groups during
pre-design and development of technologies (66% for
Other consumers).

Consumers, especially those from ethnic-minority
communities, expect organizations to build inclusivetechnologies that are intuitive to use (see Figure 13):
• 76% of ethnic-minority and women consumers expectorganizations to develop technologies that can be used bya diverse set of consumers (61% for Other consumers).

Moreover, while ethnic-minority consumers and women
expect organizations to build inclusive tech, general
consumers hold similar expectations, as we see in Figure 13:

Figure 13: More than four out of five ethnic-minority consumers (women and men) want digital technologies that canbe used by a diverse set of users"I expect organizations to..."Develop technologies that do not create exclusion based on
ethnicity and gender and allows these communities equal
opportunities as the majority communities

78%
68%

Develop technologies that are intuitive and easy to use

77%
69%

Develop technologies that can be used by a diverse setof consumers

76%
61%

Ensure a diverse set of users are consulted prior to andthroughout the design and development of apps/websites

72%
66%

Ensure that the teams involved in designing apps/websites
are diverse and representative of the consumer set they aredesigning for

68%
59%

Ensure consumer data is handled responsibly and ethicallyespecially for minority communities
Ethnic minorities and women

67%
59%
Other consumers

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, inclusive design of technologies consumer survey, March–April 2021; N=5,000 consumers
including 4000 women and ethnic-minority consumers.

24

The key to designing inclusive techA 29-year-old Black US man from our focus-group discussions
said: “It’s going to start with having an equal representation inteams that produce the technology. And then ensuring a proper
sample that adequately represents minorities.” A Middle Eastern
man from the UK echoes this sentiment, saying: “I thinktechnology is only as good as the exposure it gets. And the more

exposure they get to different datasets, the more viable they
become.” A 26-year-old Black man working at an AI startup
in Germany says: “More diverse people should join the teams
working on technology. In addition, the datasets need to be
improved to be as inclusive as possible.”

Organizations that lack inclusive tech risk
losing businessIn our focus-group discussions, many women and consumers
from ethnic-minority communities described an instancewhen they felt a tech product or service from a particularorganization was being non-inclusive:

have the option of contributing to diversity, should [go] theother way. I also think more people should avoid using them or
blacklisting organizations that aren’t inclusive in whatever they
do or produce.”• A 31-year-old Middle Eastern man from the US shared:“If I’m interacting with a brand and feel that I am being
discriminated against or made to feel excluded for somereason, I will not feel good about doing further transactions
with them. I would look for businesses or services that are
more inclusive, even if they are not as big or reputed as thebigger, discriminating brand.”• A 26-year-old Black man from the UK commented:“Penalizing companies may not be enough. We have seen big
companies being intentionally discriminatory and yet being
able to get away with it because they enjoy [high] market
share. There should be regulations to protect diverse andunder-represented consumer groups, such that organizations
are mandated to build inclusive digital products and services.
Consumers should also collectivize for class-action lawsuits incase they are consistently being discriminated [against] by techproducts and services. Including everyone should be treated asat the level of basic rights.”• A 25-year-old Black woman from Germany shared: “I thinksuch organizations should be penalized. I don’t think people ororganizations that have their products out there, which could“It’s going to start with having an equal
representation in teams that produce
the technology. And then ensuring aproper sample that adequately represents
minorities.”
A 29-year-old
Black man from the US25

4 – How can organizations movetowards greater inclusion in techteams and tech products?
From our discussions with industry leaders, experts, andacademics, and from our primary quantitative research,
we believe that organizations can develop inclusive
workspaces and tech systems by taking a few positive
actions, underpinned by strong leadership accountability (seeFigure 14). Using our key criteria for organizations to excel inworkforce-diversity practices and inclusive design (see insert– What makes an organization excel in workplace-inclusion

practices and inclusive design practices?), we scoredorganizations using the experience and feedback of womenand ethnic-minority employees in tech teams. This is used to
identify a small cohort of 10% of organizations who excel inboth inclusive design of technology practices and workplaceinclusion practices. We call these organizations “Inclusion
Frontrunners.”

Figure 14: Building an effective inclusion and inclusive design strategy• Design inclusive sourcing andhiring practices• Ensure women and ethnicminority employees are given
equal opportunity for career
growth and progression• Enable dialog and create
healthy environments

Develop robust
processes,
practices andvalue systems thatenable inclusion

Drive fairness in AI
systems and work
towards reducing
algorithmic biases• Conduct an impactassessment analysis foralgorithms and automateddecisions• Screen datasets used totrain AI systems for bias andaudit them regularly

Leading with inclusion• Ensure women and ethnic
minorities play a criticalrole in the design anddevelopment of digitaltechnologies• Incorporate checks
and balances to ensuretech design and tech
infrastructure are inclusive

Keep diverse users
at the heart ofdesigning inclusivetech/digitalproducts andservices

Lay down thetechnological anddata foundations
for fostering
inclusion• Use tools and techeffectively to build greater
inclusion• Enhance data-collection andmanagement practices forbetter tracking of DEI

Build tech leadership accountability and ownership for inclusion and diversity
1. Awareness and education
3. Accountability			Capgemini Research Institute analysis.

26

The key to designing inclusive tech

2. Authentic leadership for hybrid tech teams
4. Specific focus on diversity segments

Build tech-leadership accountability and ownership forinclusion and diversity
There is an increasing need for organizations to drive
progress on inclusion and diversity by engaging seniorbusiness leaders. In doing so, there will be greater
accountability for its success and ensure that the strategy islinked to the organization’s wider business goals.
Build greater awareness and educate leaders on
inclusion in tech teams
There exists a huge gap between leadership and employees
in tech teams when it comes to the perception of inclusive
practices within organizations, as witnessed earlier in thereport. It is imperative that leadership in tech teams becomeaware of the issues of inclusion and actively practice inclusive
leadership of their staff.
Among the Inclusion Frontrunners, the perception gap
between leadership and women and ethnic-minority
employees is much lower compared to The Rest. This goes on
to show that leaders in these organizations are much more
clued into employee perception and are in closer agreement
on inclusion practices in the workplace.
This education and awareness building can begin byleadership getting comfortable with discomfort of notknowing about other people’s lived experiences and reality
and having those conversations, however uncomfortable
they may make, to learn and improve on tenets of inclusion.
This is also a step in building greater employee trust. As weheard from a senior technology leader from a large North
America-based beverage company, “The leadership behaviors
will make a huge difference in garnering employee trust andimproving employee engagement. Leaders should be open andhave humility to hear diverse employees and to learn from theirexperiences. Leaders have to empower, provide the space, nurtureand adequately pay attention to diverse employees and theirviews.” There need to be frequent and transparent channelsof communication with employees from diverse backgrounds
to check on their wellbeing, learn where teams can improve,and to develop a radical sense of empathy with others.

Develop authentic leadership that drives flexibility andautonomy in hybrid tech teams in the “new normal”
Leaders in tech teams need to nurture remote-leadershipskills and define what constitutes “authentic” leadership:
encouraging autonomy, empathy, and transparency, as
was highlighted in the future of remote work report by
the Capgemini Research Institute.27 Critical skills include
empathy and active listening; understanding employees’
stated and unstated pain points in a world where there is lessphysical interaction (especially for employees from diverse
backgrounds, who are already trying to adjust to remote ways
of working while developing a sense of belonging). Leadersneed to develop emotional intelligence skills to lead more
inclusively in the hybrid workplace while keeping in mind thekind of flexibility and empathy that could be extended to
employees in tech teams. Leaders also need to place trustin employees to lead effectively in a virtual environment
while ensuring leaders continue empathetic and authentic
communications.28
Assign technology leaders greater responsibility andaccountability for inclusion
Organizations need to shift primary responsibility of DEI fromHR and Diversity offices to functional leaders. Technology
leads need to be held accountable, as well as being
responsible for diversity outcomes for their teams.
Leaders should be committed not just to improving diversity
within the general workforce but at leadership levels in techteams, where representation decreases further. Leadersneed to have clear diversity-related targets for their teams
and these targets should ideally be tied to broad societal
representation. While this may appear challenging, it is time
for organizations to consider the long-term societal impacts
of a skewed workforce and take steps towards parity.

27

“On numerous occasions, especially withstartups, organizations look at hiring a personwith the exact same attributes as the one
who just left. They are not open to hiring
diverse candidates.”
Elise Moronfounder, WEALO.io(A recruiters’ training program andconsulting company)

On the downside of lack of diversity in leadership teams, thehead of inclusion, diversity and equity at a large multinationalenergy company shared, “If a board is only monoculture ormono-profile, the likelihood of making the same decisions all
the time leads them to being less agile. Also, any women or
any minority who operates at that level of organization tends
to attract diverse talent to join or grow.” In addition, tying intangible and non-tangible rewards (bonuses, recognition)
for leaders could also aid in building greater accountability
among leaders.
Build a greater focus on specific diversity segments,
with a focus on country-level policies, practices, andrepresentation
While gender-based diversity focus is well establishedacross many organizations, tech teams are nowhere nearachieving a representation that reflects the societal gendermix (~50%). Organizations need to bring a much greater
focus on improving gender balance and diversity, in techteams but also at leadership level. Organizations also need tobuild greater focus on ethnicity-based equity in tech teams,
especially given how people of certain racial backgrounds are
more directly impacted by discriminatory tech (persons fromthe Black community, for example).
In the wake of the George Floyd killing in 2020, various
large organizations took strides to deal with racism within
and outside the workplace. PepsiCo CEO, Ramon Laguarta,
shared a commitment to expanding their Black managerial
population through internal development and recruitment by
30% by 2025, and to add more than 250 Black associates tomanagerial roles by 2025, including adding a minimum of 100
Black associates at executive rank.29 Bank of America pledged$1bn to fighting economic and racial inequalities over four
years “to help local communities address economic and racialinequality accelerated by a global pandemic.”30 Different
geographies have different definitions of who constitutes anethnic-minority and organizations need to take measures tobuild more robust strategies to attract and retain employees
from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Develop robust processes, practices, and value systems
that enable inclusion
Organizations need to start by putting various process andpolicies in place to create a safe and fair environment for
all employees, from diversity to anti-harassment policies,
and a clear inclusion mandate for technology teams. Also,organizations need to ensure bias-related workshops or
discussions are mandated across tech teams and also theuse of inclusive language and vocabulary while interacting inteams.

28

The key to designing inclusive tech

Design inclusive sourcing and hiring practices
Organizations need to think critically about recruitment andsourcing strategies for hiring and attracting from a wider
pool. Elise Moron, founder of WEALO.io, a recruiters’ training
program and consulting company, reveals: “On numerous
occasions, especially with startups, organizations look at hiringa person with the exact same attributes as the one who just left.
They are not open to hiring diverse candidates.”

While many organizations are already taking organizationwide diversity targets, we recommend that tech teams
set ambitious hiring targets that reflect the societal
representation in their respective regions. The diversity hiring
should also be KPI-driven, with mandates for measuring
progress and regular reporting. Organizations can take a few
positive steps to make hiring and sourcing more inclusive:
Organizations need to ensure that the job descriptions use
inclusive language and leave out any specific preference
for gender and ethnicity, among other forms of diversity.
Organizations can also conduct blind CV screenings to ensure
gender is not a factor in determining suitability of candidates.
According to writing-platform company, Textio, the use ofgender-neutral language fills jobs 14 days faster than posts
with a masculine or feminine bias. For example, Zillow Group,
an online real-estate marketplace, was able to attract
10%-11% more women applicants than average by using
certain words in their job postings.31
Critically assess your referral strategies to ensure that
there is room for people who are outside the typical class/ethnicity/gender spectrum. Organizations can also incentivize
referral for specific diverse/under-represented groups toboost hiring for such candidates. Pinterest, for example,
encourages employees to refer candidates belonging tounder-represented communities. This has increased thepercentage of referrals from under-represented talent by
55x, and referrals of women by 24%, in just six weeks.32
Nike also has a dedicated diversity-sourcing team to ensure
diverse candidates are considered when filling a role. They
have also built an inclusive hiring process, including writing
inclusive job descriptions and blindly reviewing resumés.33
When checking for cultural fit, ensure that implicit biases
around shared backgrounds and interests (which out-groups
or first-generation professionals may not have) do not creep
in. It is, therefore, important to clarify objectively whatdefines cultural fit and rate all applicants using the same
criteria. When one insurance company began hiring in thisway, it ended up offering jobs to 46% more ethnic-minority
candidates than before.34 Companies should also enable
more women and ethnic minority employees to be active ininterviewing their candidates. Engaging diverse talent in the
recruiting processes beyond referrals results in morediverse hires.
However, focusing on hiring in itself is not enough.
Organizations needs to also make focused efforts towards
retention of diverse employees and have specific strategies
to enable retention and engagement of diverse work pools.

Ensure women and ethnic-minority employees are given
equal opportunities for career growth and progression
Research suggests that women and ethnic-minority
employees being denied promotion, pay, and opportunity isa systemic problem. According to Citi Bank, the wage gap forBlack workers alone stands at $2.7trn in the US.35 In contrast,
frontrunners in our survey ensure that women and ethnic
minorities can progress along their personal career paths.
This is achieved through building greater transparency anddeveloping access to career-enhancing networks; somethingthat organizations can implement.
• 58% have promotion policies that are standardized,
formalized, and transparent• 44% ensure that promotion plans are well-represented
among women and ethnic-minority employees• 56% of women and ethnic minorities in frontrunnerorganizations have access to career-enhancing networks
as compared to 27% of the rest of the organizations. Thisis critically important, as Katherine L. Milkman, professorof Operations, Information and Decisions at the Wharton
School, has outlined: “White men tend to have the best social
networks and be the best connected – that is an empirical fact;
they preferentially get networking advantages.”36
US software company, Salesforce, has taken numerous
steps to ensure that women and ethnic minorities canachieve equality within their organization in terms of pay,
representation, and inclusion. They have built “Equality
Groups,” which represent and advocate on behalf of theseunder-represented communities. Volunteers in theseorganizations contribute considerable time and effort – andare compensated for doing so.37
Enable dialog and create healthy environments
Micro-aggressions (statements, actions, or incidents
regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional
discrimination against members of diverse backgrounds)
often find their way into large organizations, creating a noninclusive space.
• Only 38% of women and ethnic-minority employees in ourstudy agreed that discriminatory comments or jokes are
not tolerated at the workplace.
• Moreover, as we witnessed earlier, not all employees
from ethnic-minority groups receive opportunities in theworkplace (only 22% of Black employees feel they havean equal opportunity to grow as compared to 39% of
Hispanic/Latino employees).

29

56%
of frontrunner organizations sharethat women and ethnic minorities
have access to career enhancing
networks as compared to 27% of therest of the organizations.
Organizations need to find ways to provide healthy
environments and platforms for employees of diverse
backgrounds through communication and dialog. Barbara
Pachter in her book The Power of Positive Confrontation,offers techniques to manage difficult conversations in theworkplace.38 Organizations must encourage all employees
and allies of diverse groups to speak up when they witness
micro-aggressions within their teams, thereby also acting asrole models and ambassadors to greater inclusivity.
Organizations may also need to define strategies for specificethnic-minority groups and other diverse employee groups,
depending on the needs of the groups. Organizations should
encourage small, secure discussion spaces for teams to share
their experience of micro-aggressions and build a supportive
culture that encourages teams to respect divergent views
and recognize differing contexts. Employee resource groups
also act as a positive way in which organizations can build
healthy spaces and create an environment of trust whilebringing about positive change outcomes for larger groups.
Strategic, measured, and deliberate approaches are
particularly helpful in establishing safe spaces for employees
to engage within tech teams. Humana, a US health-insurancecompany, launched a series of race-related conversationsin the workplace when social unrest began rising in 2020.

“We can’t let the fear of imperfection keep us from trying to
make some sort of advancement in this conversation and tohave some dialog with our teams,” said Douglas Edwards,
senior vice president of workplace experience for Humana.
Discussion opportunities included talks hosted by a network
resource group (NRG) for Humana associates of color; ally
conversations with other NRGs; town halls; small groupgatherings; and one-to-one meetings.39
Bank of America’s employee resource group (ERG), HispanicLatino Organization for Leadership & Advancement (HOLA)
has been making an impressive impact for the company, as
well as its customers. With 30% of new checking-accountclients identifying as Hispanic/Latino, HOLA advocated formore resources to be available in Spanish. As a result, theBank of America mobile-banking app was updated with
Spanish language. HOLA members have promoted thebenefits of the mobile app among clients, resulting in a 33%
year-over-year increase in 2017 alone. Additionally, the bank’s
financial-literacy site was also made available in Spanish and
HOLA members are helping to improve financial literacy, bothwith clients and during community events. These efforts haveresulted in clients on average spending 2.5 more minutes on
the site and viewing more pages per session as compared to
the English site.40

38%
Percentage of women and ethnicminority employees that agreed that
discriminatory comments or jokes are
not tolerated at the workplace.

30

The key to designing inclusive techDrive fairness in AI systems and reduce algorithmic bias
We have shown throughout this report that a lot of techbased bias stems from AI-based systems that cause harmand inconvenience to diverse groups – women and people ofcolor, among others. Machine learning (ML), a subset of AI, isa tool for building models that accurately represent inputtraining data, and it allows a machine to learn automaticallyfrom past data without programming explicitly. It is well
documented that, when undesired biases concerning
demographic groups are in the training data, well-trainedmodels will reflect those biases. Many researchers areworking on models to mitigate unwanted biases in datasets.
A recent UC Berkeley study investigated the generationof gender-related bias in image-captioning models andintroduced a new Equalizer model to lower error rate.41
Another study looks at fairness measures in the context ofadversarial debiasing.42 It is imperative that organizations
begin with an understanding of AI-based bias and work
towards an ethical AI framework that upholds values oftransparency, explicability, and fairness.
Conduct an impact-assessment analysis for algorithms
and automated decisions

In the case of determining which automated decisions require
such vetting for unintended consequences and biases, teams
must ask a few questions:• Who will this impact negatively?
• What are the consequences for those impacted negatively?
What is the severity of harm (e.g., mild inconvenience in theform of unsuitable recommendations; greater harms in theform of denial of loans; and long-term harms in the form ofincorrect health-risk assessments)?
• What are the potential legal, social, and economic effectsof such unintended consequences on communities,
datasets, and design of these AI systems?44
New York University’s AI Now Institute has already introduceda model framework for governmental entities to create
algorithmic impact assessments (AIAs), drawing directly on
impact-assessment frameworks in environmental protection,
data protection, privacy, and human-rights policy domains.
The purpose of these is to evaluate the potential detrimental
effects of a given algorithm.45

Organizations must focus on deciding what automateddecisions need to be implemented and assessing thepotential impact of biases that may exist in these AI-driven
systems.
AI and data-science teams and other implementors of AI
systems should have agreed views on the purpose of analgorithm prior to its deployment and develop a bias-impact
statement. Organizations must also account for demographic
testing of AI. The objective here must be to identify which
segments of customers or demographics might be adversely
affected by the outcomes of your AI application, in case there
are large variations in accuracy and reliability of outcomes.
Use this step to ensure that AI outcomes do not drasticallychange for different input conditions or user cohorts.43

31

65%
of frontrunner organizations use AI
to assess employee sentiments ascompared to 46% of the rest of theorganizations.
Screen datasets used to train AI systems for bias andaudit them regularly

algorithms as per the definition help in controlling historicalinadequacies and human bias.

AI teams need to ensure that good AI-related datamanagement practices are set up and followed bydata-engineering, data-science, and AI teams. These teams
should incorporate “privacy-by-design” and “diversity-bydesign” principles in the design and build phase and ensure
robustness, repeatability, and auditability of the entire data
cycle (raw data, training data, test data, etc.), so as to be able
to check for and mitigate algorithmic bias.

From a data-management standpoint, AI practitioners alsoneed to:Teams need to particularly focus on ensuring that existingdatasets do not create or reinforce existing bias. For example:• Build adequate data-labelling practices and review
periodically• Identifying existing bias in the dataset through use ofexisting AI tools or through specific checks in statistical
patterns of datasets• Store responsibly, so that it is made available for audits andrepeatability assessments• Being mindful of not creating a selection bias on the datawhen developing algorithms• Exploring and deploying systems to check for and correct
existing bias in the dataset before developing algorithms• Conducting sufficient pre-release trials and post-release
monitoring to identify, regulate, and mitigate any existing
bias.
IBM’s AI Fairness 360 is an open-source library in Python
programming language, encompassing several techniques
for evaluation of fairness, and identification and correctionof bias.46 Organizations have an opportunity to correct bias
proactively in datasets by focusing on the training data.
Defining what is fair and ethical and programming the32

The key to designing inclusive tech

• Ensure that data is sourced ethically and in line withregulation• Check for accuracy, quality, robustness, and potential bias,
including detection of under-represented minorities or
events/patterns• Constantly monitor results produced by models, including
their accuracy, and test for bias or accuracy degradation.47

Lay down the technological and data foundations forfostering inclusion
Use tools and technologies to boost inclusion
Organizations can use upcoming tools and technologies
more effectively to reduce human-led bias while putting inchecks and balances for debiasing HR systems. One such techis the use of AI, when deployed with care and when alreadychecked for biases as we shared earlier. In our survey, we
found that Inclusion Frontrunners are deploying AI more
actively for promoting greater engagement as compared to
The Rest (see Figure 15). This could also help in capturing datathat could be crucial for sharpening DEI practices within techteams.

Figure 15: More Inclusion Frontrunner organizations use AI for employee-engagement practices"In our organization, artiﬁcial intelligence is used to..."
67%

65%
54%

51%
46%

21%

Engage employees throughtimely and personalized learningand development programs

Assess employee sentiments via automatedemployee management through workﬂow
software, pulse surveys, etc.
Inclusion Frontrunners

Enable eﬀective and automateddelegation of tasks for smoother
workﬂow

The Rest

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=418
ethnic-minority and women employees (in tech functions) from N=418 organization under consideration with N=43
Inclusion Frontrunners.

33

In addition, organizations can use certain tools that havebeen developed to target and reduce bias – such as biasinterrupter tools48 and approaches that allow you actively
to target bias and work towards reducing it. In addition,organizations can deploy bias tests for tech teams torecognize and reduce implicit internal bias. One such tool is
Project Implicit’s Implicit Association Test, which, throughelaborate assessments, points towards hidden biases inhumans.49
At the same time, organizations must ensure that they havechecks and balances in place to identify existing bias in
AI-based and other HR systems, and that they correct existingbias in the dataset before developing algorithms.50
Enhance data-collection and management practices forbetter tracking of DEI
Organizations need not only to capture but also to manage
and disclose diversity-related data so as to improve diversity
outcomes. A recent paper from Harvard Kennedy School
suggests that the collection, analysis, and disclosure ofdiversity data can be a powerful tool for progress, when usedcorrectly.51
Organizations need to strive for a careful balance between
collecting diversity-related data and privacy of individuals.
How can organizations build greater trust among individuals
so that they willingly disclose their diverse backgroundrelated information (be it with respect to disability, ethnicity,
economic status, or another aspect). Organizations need tobe careful in storing and protecting this information while
using it responsibly to come up with policies and practices fortheir employees.
While talking about tracking gender-diversity progress ina multinational telecommunications company, its global
lead of inclusion and diversity shared, “We track the number
of applicants from each gender, promotions per gender, hiring
redundancies, global job structure, pay equity, and access totraining. We are also tracking the gender ratio in each job groupand the presence of women on each level of the hierarchy.”

L’Oréal became a pioneer in the industry in 2007 when it
called upon the French National Demographic ResearchInstitute to conduct a thorough gender pay-gap analysis andgo public with the results. (This practice contrasts greatly
with US companies, where only 9% of corporations publish
information on differences between the salaries of men
and women.)52 By taking a close look at their data around
representation and hiring practices, the company was able toadjust to level the playing field. Today, 46% of the executives
at L’Oréal USA are women and pay equity averages
within 5%.53
Organizations should not only collect data through surveys,
feedback, HR databases, and other tools deployed in theworkplace; organizations should also look at the datacollected from bias-interrupter and bias-decoder tools tocheck the kind of biases that creep in within their tech teams
to take meaningful corrective decisions for the future. In
addition, instead of letting the data sit in HR systems, it willbe critical that tech middle-management and leaders are
empowered with various datapoints and findings to help
improve practices across DEI. Some key metrics to track forprogressing on inclusion and diversity within tech teams
would be:• Monitoring percentage of women and ethnic-minority
employees in smaller tech teams in comparison withthe larger function, the company, labor market for thegeography and industry standards• Retention: Comparing average tenure for women andethnic-minority employees to average tenure across theworkforce or average tenure of the rest of the employees.
• Comparing promotion percentages, number of hires,
employee engagement scores for women and ethnicminority employees to the rest.54

67%
of frontrunner organizations believethat inclusive design is a source ofinnovation and differentiation ascompared to 34% of the rest of theorganizations.

34

The key to designing inclusive tech“We are focused on building our teams’
capabilities in creating more inclusive products.
We have educational sessions specifically forcertain roles like front-end developers, designers,
product owners, and content managers. This is
to ensure that they all have knowledge about
the subject and the requirements.”
Anna Simon
Online design manager at Telia

Keep diverse users at the heart of designing inclusivetech/digital products and services
Organizations need to focus on taking a holistic approach
towards embedding inclusive design processes and practices
within tech teams.

Ensure women and ethnic minorities play a critical rolein the design and development of digital technologies,
especially AI systems

This is supported by our research:

Organizations need to acknowledge the importance ofinclusive design and build awareness, in addition to working
with a diverse set of users. As we heard from Elise Moron,
founder of WEALO.io: “You should be aware of your cognitive
biases at the onset of product development. The product teamshould be neutral and gather feedback from all segments ofsociety. You should design not for minorities, but you should
design with these minorities, as you don’t know better than them.
Often, the product leaders go and create the product and thenjust ask for validation, but it’s not enough.”• 67% of frontrunners believe that inclusive design is asource of innovation and differentiation (34% for The Rest)• 56% believe that inclusive design increases revenue
through increased usage (21% of The Rest) and 51%
believe it increases customer satisfaction (27% of The
Rest).
Enabling inclusive design allows organizations to build astrong competitive advantage. It enables organizations
to expand their offering to new consumers while being
competitive in a globalized environment. Diverse,
empowered teams are required for ethical and inclusive
solutions, technical design, and user experiences acrossmarkets and industries.
Some organizations are taking a focused approach toinclusive technology design. Planned Parenthood (a nonprofit
organization that provides reproductive health care in the
US and globally) launched its first digital product, Spot On– a free period- and birth-control-tracking app that’s been
downloaded more than 1m times since its debut in 2016. Spot
On was developed to provide reliable birth control and period
tracking in an inclusive, non-gendered way. The app seeks
to empower all people of reproductive age to understandand manage their menstrual cycles, birth control, and sexual
health. The app was designed to be gender-neutral andusable for people, regardless of their sexual orientation orgender identity and the emojis and color used were also
reflective of that commitment (feedback from users praisethat the design is not pink, for example).55

Organizations should:• Approach the building of inclusive and diverse teams
not just at an overall tech function level but drill down tovarious smaller teams and departments involved in theprocess of digital product development and design. The
targets for diversity and inclusion therefore should also
be at micro-team levels and not only at an overall productteam or tech function level.
• Educate product design, UI, UX, and tech teams on theprinciples of accessibility in design, universal design, andinclusive design, and build awareness of differences inguidelines and methodologies.Anna Simon, online design
manager at Telia, says: “We are focused on building ourteams’ capabilities in creating more inclusive products. We
have educational sessions specifically for certain roles likefront-end developers, designers, product owners, and content
managers. This is to ensure that they all have knowledge about
the subject and the requirements.”

35

“The third and final dimension is - recognizing
the broader beneficial impact. When we designfor the edge we actually make products that
benefit many others. It can be up to 3-4 times
your expected audience.”
Manisha Amin
CEO, Centre for Inclusive Design• Design in tandem with end users/consumers and use
iterative processes that check areas such as usability
and experience from different user types. This should
not be done only at the research phase or at the endof the product design, but throughout the design anddevelopment process, so that there is a consistent loop
and an opportunity to make amends to the digitalproduct/service.
Manisha Amin, CEO at Centre for Inclusive Design, a social
enterprise for inclusive design in Australia, shared her views,
on deeply embedding inclusive design with us: “We use thedimensions first created by the Inclusive Design Research Centre.
The first dimension is understanding who you are designing forand your own biases, and the diversity of the team. The second
one is actually creating something new by co-designing products,
using participatory design, and ensuring accessibility by working
with not only a diverse set of employees but also users. The thirdand final dimension is - recognizing the broader beneficial impact.
When we design for the edge we actually make products that
benefit many others. It can be up to 3-4 times your expectedaudience.”• 44% of frontrunners believe that involving women andethnic-minority employees ensures back-end algorithms ofdigital products are more inclusive.
Organizations should also build diverse teams for developing,
deploying, and overseeing AI algorithms, drawing on avariety of racial, gender, educational, and demographic
backgrounds. A recent research published by the AI Now
Institute, estimates that only 18% of authors at some of thebiggest AI conferences are women.56 It also highlights links
between the lack of diversity in the current AI industry andthe discriminatory behavior of AI systems. Salesforce, theUS cloud-based software company, is committed to building
a workforce that reflects society. Salesforce claims to have
44% of its US workforce made up of underrepresented
groups (women, Black people, Latinx, indigenous, multiracial,
LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and veterans), and 23.5% of
women in its tech workforce globally.57 In addition to diversityof people, diversity of disciplines must be encouraged –that of different viewpoints, educational backgrounds, andperspectives, to come together seamlessly during AI design
to ingrain sensitivity in AI systems.58

We also found this in our analysis of Inclusion Frontrunners.
As Figure 16 shows:• 60% of frontrunners believe that creating a diverse andinclusive workforce enables a better understanding ofinclusive design (22% for others).

60%
of frontrunner organizations
believe that creating a diverse andinclusive workforce enables a better
understanding of inclusive design ascompared to 22% of the rest of theorganizations.

36

The key to designing inclusive techFigure 16: Inclusion Frontrunners are aware that workforce diversity enables inclusive design and vice versa% of organization's agreeing with the following statements

60%

49%
44%

44%

28%
22%

21%

18%

The understanding of
extreme use cases forinclusive design gets
redeﬁned when
diversity and inclusion
is promoted withintech teams

15%

More inclusive digitalproducts lead tomore women andethnic minorities
wanting to work forthe organization
and/or tech teams

The involvement of
women and ethnic
minorities ensure thatthe backend
algorithm of thedigital products are
more inclusive

Inclusive Frontrunners

The involvement of
more women andethnic minorities
bring in diﬀerent andcritical perspectives
on design, leading tomore inclusivity

14%

Women andethnic minorities
are well
represented in
the tech teams
that produce
digital products

The Rest

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021; N=418
ethnic-minority and women employees (in tech functions) from N=418 organization under consideration with N=43
Inclusion Frontrunners.

“For example, while developing COVID-19 vaccine management
solutions, in order to create equitable access, we counseled our productand system integrator teams to send appointment reminders throughemail as well as text message, and to enable sign-ups through multiple
channels . If sign-ups could only be performed online or via smartphone,
and are only available in English, there would be risk of marginalizing
those without access to technology, those who are less digitally literate,
non-English speaking populations, and those who are only able to use
lower-tech options.”
Yoav Schlesinger
ethical AI practice principal, Salesforce37

Incorporate checks and balances to ensure tech design
and tech infrastructure are inclusive
A lot of organizations that build digital products andtechnologies already consider questions of accessibility,
which is something that is often mandated by regulations.
For example, Apple empowers its ecosystem by using Global
Accessibility Awareness Day to highlight features, thirdparty applications, accessories, and products that support
accessibility.59 But there is a lot more to inclusive design thanmeeting accessibility standards. Organizations need to design
for a great range of human differences and ensure that theirtech products and solutions represent everyone.
As well as creating diverse tech teams, there are a number offactors to consider when designing and developing products:• Design forms to be accepting of all genders and all ethnicminority communities. For example, users should not haveto choose from male and female-only gender binaries or
be obliged to disclose their sexual orientation or ethnic
status, among other demographic identifiers.
• Strive to include the widest possible range of voices inyour product-development process; this is particularly
important in research and testing.
• Consider how you are representing your users acrossyour experiences, for example by using gender-neutral or
gender-fluid iconography, representation, and celebrationof ethnic diversity in imagery, and non-gendered language;
be as intersectional in your design approach as possible.
• Check explicitly if your design works for particularcommunities and does not create specific risks or
disadvantages for them; exclusionary design choices
should be tested and eliminated.
• Design for flexibility, customization of use, and adaptabilityof contexts; allow customers to customize how theyinteract with a product.60• A/B testing is often used in making design decisions, but
can lead to exclusionary default settings;61 tech and digital
designers need to be cognizant of such biases, even in themost used design methodologies, in order to reorient theirperspectives on designing for inclusion.
Yoav Schlesinger, ethical AI practice principal at Salesforce,
explains: “For example, while developing COVID-19 vaccine
management solutions, in order to create equitable access, wecounseled our product and system integrator teams to send
appointment reminders through email as well as text message,
and to enable sign-ups through multiple channels . If sign-ups
could only be performed online or via smartphone, and are only
available in English, there would be risk of marginalizing those
without access to technology, those who are less digitally literate,
non-English speaking populations, and those who are only able touse lower-tech options.”

Building a case for inclusive design“Inclusion is when you
think about people
who are not included
or overlooked. When
you’re being exclusive,
underrepresented
communities tend to
be under-resourced.
Understanding the lackof resources is importantbecause there’s an opportunity to scale design
solutions for other overlooked communities. Let’sdevelop a plan with inclusive ambitious goals
with measurable results that can be tracked overtime. Let’s be able to quantify this, audit it over
the year, and showcase the benefits and profits.
Let’s build credibility behind it and show why it’s
important to do this repeatedly.”
Nancy Douyon
CEO of Douyon Signature
38

The key to designing inclusive tech

“Developing inclusive
projects means working
with rooted historicalsocial issues – it isa profound culturalchange and requires theinvolvement of a broad
ecosystem. As we did at
TIM, I believe in creating
a governance modelthat involves the participation of employees,
managers, and senior leadership, working
continuously with training and communication
teams. It is also essential to involve an ecosystemof diverse stakeholders to know the needs of
ethnic-minority groups.”
Mario Girasole
Executive VP, Regulatory, Institutional, and Public
Relations TIM, Brazil

CONCLUSION
In this report, we demonstrate why inclusion in tech teams
is so critical in the context of women and ethnic minorities,
and how there is a clear relationship between inclusive techteams and inclusive design of technology. The pandemic
has also exacerbated the use of digital products, channels
and services, as well as creating a situation where a very
different kind of hybrid workplace is taking shape, bringing
back into focus the need for inclusive virtual workspaces.
The indiscriminate nature of certain technologies andonline platforms being deployed by many consumer-facing
companies, and the growing consumer awareness of suchtech, points to the urgent need for building inclusive digitalproducts and services. It also makes business sense: catering
for the broadest span of human diversity opens up a muchwider audience and a more loyal and engaged customer base.
However, as our research has shown, there is a lot more
to do. Consumers are not only aware of discriminatory
technology, they have experienced it first-hand, and they
expect organizations to do better. Designing inclusive teams
and developing inclusive products will also create more room
for innovation, creativity, and greater scalability of digitalproducts and services, and organizations not working on
this will miss out on the huge potential that inclusion brings.
Organizations need to act with urgency to drive inclusive
design in technology, building a more inclusive digital future
for their people and their customers.

39

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
We carried out extensive research with qualitative andquantitative components. We conducted executive andconsumer surveys. Our focus was on the experience of
women and persons of ethnic-minority communities acrossboth the surveys. We also spoke to women and persons ofcolor and ethnic-minority communities in our focus-group
discussions and in-depth interviews, along with otherindustry experts.

Executive Survey
We surveyed 500 organizations with one tech employee and one leadership respondent from each organization, a total of 1,000
executive respondents.

India

United States10%

Sweden10%17%13% France

11%
Italy

12%
United Kingdom

Sector distribution of organizations
FinTech organizations
like banking andinsurance start ups

USD 11 billion< USD 20 billion 11%

USD 1 billion
53% < USD 5 billion

E-Commerce
7%

5%
26%

Consumerproducts/Retail

USD 6 billion 17%< USD 10 billion

Distribution of respondents bygender and ethnicity
Men not fromethnic-minority
community

18%

20%

Retail Banking/Insurance

18%
31%

Utilities 13%
Healthcare andLife Sciences/
Healthcare start-up/
digital native

Less than US$1 billion

12% Germany

10%

Public Sector/
Government 11%

More than US$20 billion

13%

Australia 10%
Spain

Annual revenue of organizations
3%

Country of headquarters of organizations

Men from
ethnic-minority
community

Women fromethnic-minority
community

24%
27%

Women not fromethnic-minority
community

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce and inclusive technologies survey, March-April 2021; N = 1000
respondents, with one tech employee and one leadership executive from 500 organizations.
40

The key to designing inclusive techIn-depth interviews
We conducted 32 in-depth interviews with industry experts, academics, think tanks, startups, and anonymized employees fromvarious organizations. The experts and employees were from inclusion and diversity teams; tech and AI teams; UX and UI design
teams; and AI ethics and universal design experts.

Consumer Survey
We conducted a survey of 5,000 consumers across nine countries.

Primary residency of the respondent
Australia
9%

5%

15%

61-72

15%

32% 18-30

15% United States

Spain 9%Italy

Above 72

United Kingdom

9%

India

Age group of the respondent

46-60 14%9%

10%
Sweden12%
12%France34%

31-45

Germany

Household income of respondent$90,000 - $99,999 1%$80,000 - $89,999$70,000 - $79,999

4% 4%

12%

1% $100,000 or more
$10000- $19,999
12%

15%
20%

I prefer not 1%
to disclose

1% Gender-neutral/non-binary$20,000 - $29,999

12% $30,000 $39,999$60,000 - 19%$69,999

Gender identity of respondents

Man 39%59% Woman$40,000 - $49,999$50,000 - $59,999

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021;
N= 5000 consumers.

41

Distribution of respondents bygender and ethnicity

Distribution of respondents by ethnicity
I prefer not to disclose

Men from20%
ethnic-minority
community

30%

Women not fromethnic-minority
community

My ethnicity is not listed
Native/Indigenous people

Multiracial / Multi-ethnic3%

Men not fromethnic-minority
20%
community

4%
7%

8%

White 10%30%

Women fromethnic-minority
community

Asian
24%

14%
Middle Eastern/Arab

16% Black14%
Hispanic/Latino

Source: Capgemini Research Institute, Inclusive workforce, and inclusive technologies survey, March–April 2021;
N= 5000 consumers.

Consumer focus group discussions
We conducted three focus-group discussions in the US, Germany, and the UK of 8–12 participants per country from diverse
backgrounds in each group.

42

The key to designing inclusive tech

APPENDIX
Respondent categories through the report
Throughout the report, we have categorized leadership executives and employees into various groups:

Technology
Function

Women
employees

Ethnic-minority
employees

Women andethnic-minority
employees

Leadership
Executives



























All
Women fromethnic-minority
community
Men from
ethnic-minority
community
Women notbelonging to
ethnic-minority
community
Gender andEthnicity

Men notbelonging to
ethnic-minority
community

Gender-neutral/
Non-binary
belonging to
ethnic-minority
community

Gender-neutral/
Non-binary notbelonging to
ethnic-minority
community
Non-supervisory
Role type
Supervisory











43

REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Federal Reserve website, “What Are We Learning about Artificial Intelligence in Financial Services?” November 2018.
Capgemini Research Institute, “AI and the Ethical Conundrum,” October 2020.
Definitions of ethnicity may differ from country to country.
CultureAmp, “How to define diversity, equity, and inclusion at work.”
Inclusive designs serve the full spectrum of consumers, as opposed to ‘universal design’, which fails to address individual accessibility
or inclusion objectives.
6. Group of people who differ in race or color or in national, religious, or cultural origin from the dominant group — often the majority
population — of the country in which they live.
7. Glassdoor, “Diversity & Inclusion Workplace Survey,” September 2020.
8. Intuit, “5 Surprising Benefits of Fostering Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace,” May 2019.
9. Glassdoor, “Diversity & Inclusion Workplace Survey,” September 2020.
10. Computer weekly, “All to gain: Unlocking the potential of a diverse and inclusive workforce,” May 2020.
11. HBR, “How and Where Diversity Drives Financial Performance,” January 2018.
12. Great place to work, “Racially Diverse Workplaces Have Largest Revenue Growth,”, January 2020.
13. Forbes, “Embracing Diversity and Fostering Inclusion Is Good for Your Business,” September 2018.
14. Talentlyft, “Top 10 Benefits of Diversity in the Workplace,” December 2018.
15. Correlation coefficient is a measure of the strength of relationship between the movements of two variables.
16. Small events of unfairness that may be hard to prove; they may be covert, often unintentional, and frequently unrecognized;
they occur wherever people are perceived to be different; and can cause serious harm, especially in the aggregate. The SAGE
Encyclopaedia of Psychology and Gender.
17. Fortune, “COVID-19 has driven millions of women out of the workforce. Here’s how to help them come back,” February 2021.
18. Bloomberg, “The Pandemic Doesn’t Have to Hurt Women Most,” December 2020.
19. SHRM, “The Wage Gap Is Wider for Working Mothers,” October 2019.
20. IndexMundi, “Germany Demographics Profile.”
21. United States Census Bureau website.
22. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2019,” December 2020.
23. Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru,” Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification,” 2018.
24. The Atlantic, “How Algorithms Can Bring Down Minorities’ Credit Scores,” December 2016.
25. ProPublica, “TSA Agents Say They’re Not Discriminating Against Black Women, But Their Body Scanners Might Be,” April 2019.
26. Inviqa, SSE case study
27. Capgemini Research Institute, “The future of work: from remote to hybrid,” December 2020.
28. Capgemini Research Institute, “Virtual organizations need real leadership: COVID-19 and the virtual operating model,” March 2020.
29. Fortune, “PepsiCo CEO: ‘Black Lives Matter, to our company and to me.’ What the food and beverage giant will do next,” June 2020.
30. World Economic Forum, “What companies are doing to fight systemic racism,” June 2020.
31. Women in recruitment, “Writing gender neutral job ads,” October 2020.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Harvard Business Review, “How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams,” Nov–Dec 2019.
35. Citi Bank – Global Perspective and Solutions, “Closing the Racial Inequality Gaps- The Economic Cost of Black Inequality in the U.S.,”
September 2020.
36. The Atlantic, “The dark side of networking,” September 2017.
37. Salesforce Website – Equality Groups, accessed on May 13, 2021.
38. Barbara Patcher, “The Power of Positive Confrontation: The Skills You Need to Handle Conflicts at Work, at Home, Online, and in
Life,” November 1999.
39. Houston Business Journal, “Tips for having difficult, but critical, conversations about race in the workplace, with Humana’s Sr. VP of
Workplace Experience,” September 2020.
40. Diversity Best Practices, “Best Practices from the 2018 Above and Beyond Awards,” June 2018.
41. UC Berkeley, Boston University, “Women also Snowboard: Overcoming Bias in Captioning Models,” March 2019.
42. Brian Hu Zhang, “Mitigating Unwanted Biases with Adversarial Learning,” January 2018.
43. Capgemini Research Institute, “AI and the Ethical Conundrum,” September 2020.
44. Brookings, “Algorithmic bias detection and mitigation: Best practices and policies to reduce consumer harms,” May 2019.
45. AI Now, “Algorithmic impact assessments: a practical framework for public agency accountability,” April 2018.

44

The key to designing inclusive tech

46. IBM Research, “AI Fairness 360,” accessed September 2020.
47. Capgemini Research Institute, “Why addressing ethical questions in AI will benefit organizations,” July 2019.
48. Bias interrupters – company website, “Tools for organizations.”
49. Project Implicit – website.
50. Capgemini Research Institute, “Why addressing ethical questions in AI will benefit organizations,” August 2019.
51. Harvard Kennedy School, “Goals and targets for diversity, equity and inclusion: A high leverage point to advance gender equality in
the U.S. tech industry,” April 2020.
52. L’Oréal Website, “L’Oréal Ranked the Top Gender-balanced Company in Europe by Equileap.”
53. L’Oréal, “CEO action for diversity and inclusion.”
54. Include-empower.com, “Meaningful metrics for inclusion and diversity.”
55. Core77 Design Awards 2017, “Notable Interaction Award,” 2017.
56. AI Now Institute, “DISCRIMINATING SYSTEMS: Gender, Race, and Power in AI,” April 2019.
57. Salesforce Equality Website.
58. Capgemini Research Institute, “AI and the Ethical Conundrum,” September 2020.
59. CNN, “Apple is celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day with a host of apps and features”, May 21, 2020.
60. UX Collective, “10 Ways to Design More Inclusive Products,” November 2020.
61. Sasha Costanza-Chock, “Design Justice: Community Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need,” March 2020.

45

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Shobha Meera

Anne-Laure Thieullent

Shobha Meera is the Chief Corporate Social
Responsibility Officer for the CapgeminiGroup and a member of the Group Executive
Committee. In this role, she is responsible fordirecting the Group’s strategy and actions onsocial and environmental sustainability. Prior
to this role, Shobha was the Global Head ofsales and marketing for the Financial Services
SBU and a member of the FSSBU Executive
Leadership Team.

Anne-Laure leads the Artificial Intelligence &Analytics Capgemini Group Offer (PerformAI), one of Capgemini’s 7 Group Portfolio
Priorities. She advises Capgemini clientson how they should put AI technologies towork for their organization, with trusted AI
at scale services for business transformationand innovation. She has over 19 years ofexperience in massive data, analytics andAI systems.

Steve Jones

Greg Bentham

Steve Jones is Capgemini Chief Data Architect
and accountable for Trusted AI, Data
Ecosystems as well as being an executive
sponsor for Capgemini LGBTQ+ group
OUTfront.

Greg leads the Capgemini North America
Presales Organization focused on enablingclients achieve their Digital Agenda throughdifferentiated Cloud and Cybersecurity
offers. With 23 years of technology
consulting and service integrator experience,
Greg’s passion is bringing all of Capgemini’s
rich culture and offers to our clients seeking
to be intelligent enterprise leaders.

Annette Klimczak

Christina Schehl

Annette Klimczak is the Capgemini AccountExecutive for Unilever, leading the Data
and Analytics business. She is passionate
about helping enterprises transform by theeffective access and use of trusted data by
everyone, to drive business success.

Christina supports customer-centric
enterprises to drive sustainable growth, bybuilding and orchestrating experiences atscale, while harnessing the power of data
and technology.

Jean-Baptiste Perrin

Janet P. Pope

Jean-Baptiste leads Capgemini Invent’s social
impact business initiative: Invent for Society.
With a strong background in public sector
and sustainable development, he is also a
Vice-President within Citizen Services atCapgemini Invent France, leads sustainableprojects and develops business synergies with
our most recent acquisitions including social
impact agency, Purpose.

Janet Pope facilitates connections withpurpose to deliver workforce engagement
results that align to the business strategy,
support people, protect planet, and growpartnerships based on overarching corporate
values. She’s been with Capgemini since 2005
and won the 2020 Women of Excellence
Diversity Innovator Award from Seramount(formerly Working Mother Media).

Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer
Member of Group Executive Committee
shobha.meera@capgemini.com

Chief Data Architect,
Capgemini Group Portfolio
steve.g.jones@capgemini.com

Vice President, Insights & Data and Unilever
Account Executive, Capgemini
annette.klimczak@capgemini.com

Vice President, Invent for Society
Global Leader, Capgemini Inventjean-baptiste.perrin@capgemini.com

46

The key to designing inclusive techManaging Director, Artificial Intelligence &Analytics Group Offer leader
annelaure.thieullent@capgemini.com

Head of Pre-Sales and Vice President, Cloud
Infrastructure Services, Capgemini NA
greg.bentham@capgemini.com

Vice President | Head of frog Germany at frog,
part of Capgemini Invent
christina.schehl@capgemini.com

North America Corporate Responsibility
Director
janet.pope@capgemini.com

Elodie Asselin

Director, Workforce and Organization,
Capgemini Invent
elodie.asselin@capgemini.com
Elodie is a Director at Workforce &Organization at Capgemini Invent France,
leading the purpose, strategy andorganization stream. She has an extensive
experience in CSR, strategy, and leadership/talent development

Jerome Buvat

Global Head of Research and Head ofCapgemini Research Institutejerome.buvat@capgemini.com
Jerome is head of the Capgemini ResearchInstitute. He works closely with industry
leaders and academics to help organizations
understand the nature and impact of digital
disruption.

Priscilla Li

Director- Head of Applied Innovation
priscilla.li@capgemini.com
Priscilla Li leads our frog Customer
Experience, Technology and Innovation
capability and our Applied Innovation
Exchange (AIE) in the UK to build a better
future with the latest technologies.

Amrita Sengupta

Senior Manager, Capgemini Research Instituteamrita.a.sengupta@capgemini.com
Amrita is a senior manager at the Capgemini
Research Institute. She tracks the patternsof digital disruptions across industries and its
impact on businesses and society.

Hiral Shah

Senior Consultant, Capgemini ResearchInstitutehiral.shah@capgemini.com
Hiral is a Senior Consultant at Capgemini
Research Institute. She works closely withindustry/business leaders to help themleverage digital technologies to transformtheir organization and business operations.

The authors would like to especially thank Shahul Nath, Abhishek Jain, Arnab Chakraborty, Rasuka Kumar, Onkar Pandey and Subrahmanyam
KVJ for their contribution to this research.
In addition, the authors would like to thank Anne Lebel, Anne-Violaine Monnie-Agazzi, Tammy Baird, Rob Bartlett, Charlotte Fereday, Barbara
Katarzyna Schafarczyk, Alexander Erdmans, Barbara van der Heijden, Chris Cooper, Elisabetta Spontoni, Jean-Pierre Villaret, Anne Stahl, Randy
Semeleer, Ron Tolido, Aghogho Akponah, Corrine Leulier, Hilda Gameiro, Payal Wadhwa, Marijn Markus, Fleur du Pasquier, Karine Vasselin,
Isabell Schastok, Manushree Singh, Gayathri Ramamurthy, Michell Mathias, Satinder Kaur, Lauren M Kimball, Charlie Weibel-Charvet, Aaron
Rorstrom, Lucie Taurines, Steph Sands, Omar Hakim and Soumik Das for their contribution to this research.

About the Capgemini Research Institute
The Capgemini Research Institute is Capgemini’s in-house think tank on all things digital. The Institute publishes research on the impact ofdigital technologies on large traditional businesses. The team draws on the worldwide network of Capgemini experts and works closelywith academic and technology partners. The Institute has dedicated research centers in India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and theUnited States. It was recently ranked number one in the world for the quality of its research by independent analysts.

Visit us at www.capgemini.com/researchinstitute/47

For more information, please contact:
GlobalShobha Meera
Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer, Member ofGroup Executive Committee
shobha.meera@capgemini.com

Anne-Laure Thieullent
Managing Director, Artificial Intelligence & Analytics Group
Offer leader
annelaure.thieullent@capgemini.com

US

UK

Steve Jones
Chief Data Architect, Capgemini Group Portfolio
steve.g.jones@capgemini.com

Annette Klimczak
Vice President, Insights & Data and Unilever AccountExecutive, Capgemini
annette.klimczak@capgemini.com

Greg Bentham
Head of Pre-Sales and Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure
Services, Capgemini
greg.bentham@capgemini.com

Priscilla Li
Director- Head of Applied Innovation
priscilla.li@capgemini.com

Janet P. Pope
North America Corporate Responsibility Director
janet.pope@capgemini.com
Germany

FranceChristina Schehl
Vice President | Head of frog Germany at frog, part ofCapgemini Invent
christina.schehl@capgemini.com

Jean-Baptiste Perrin
Vice President, Invent for Society Global Leader,
Capgemini Inventjean-baptiste.perrin@capgemini.com

48

The key to designing inclusive tech

Discover more about our research:

The Great Digital
Divide

The fluid workforce
revolution

The Future of WorkAI and theethical conundrum

Conversations
Towards Ethical AI

The Art of customer
centric Artificial
Intelligence

Why addressing ethicalquestions in AI will
benefit organizations

Street Smart

Upskilling yourpeople for the age ofthe machine

Conversational
Interfaces

EmotionalIntelligence

Smart Stores

Climate AI

Agile at scale

Building the
Retail Superstar

The data-powered
enterprise49

Subscribe to latest research from
Cpgemini Research InstituteReceive advance copies of our reports by scanning the QR code or visiting
https://www.capgemini.com/capgemini-research-institute-subscription/

Capgemini Research Institute

Fields marked with an * are required
First Name*

Last Name*

Email*

By submitting this form, I understand that my data will be processed by Capgemini as indicated above anddescribed in the Terms of use.*

Submit50

The key to designing inclusive tech

37

51

AboutCapgemini
Capgemini is a global leader in partnering with companies to transform and manage theirbusiness by harnessing the power of technology. The Group is guided everyday by its purposeof unleashing human energy through technology for an inclusive and sustainable future. It isa responsible and diverse organization of 270,000 team members in nearly 50 countries. With
its strong 50 year heritage and deep industry expertise, Capgemini is trusted by its clients toaddress the entire breadth of their business needs, from strategy and design to operations,fuelled by the fast evolving and innovative world of cloud, data, AI, connectivity, software,digital engineering and platforms. The Group reported in 2020 global revenues of €16 billion.

Get the Future You Want | www.capgemini.com

About
the Capgemini Research Institute
The Capgemini Research Institute is Capgemini’s in-house think-tank on all things digital.
The Institute publishes research on the impact of digital technologies on large traditional
businesses. The team draws on the worldwide network of Capgemini experts and works
closely with academic and technology partners. The Institute has dedicated research centers
in India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.

MACS_10062021_SD29

Visit us at: www.capgemini.com/researchinstitute/

Copyright © 2021 Capgemini. All rights reserved.