Develop a More Diverse and Inclusive Workforce

©2016SAPSEoranSAPaffiliatecompany.Allrightsreserved.
Business Beyond Bias
Develop a More Diverse and Inclusive Workforce
Using SAP® SuccessFactors® Solution Technology
to Improve Gender Equity

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© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
August 2016
By Gabby Burlacu, PhD; Steven T. Hunt, PhD; and Sheri Rogers
We are indebted to the SAP SuccessFactors Solution Marketing, Solution Adoption,
Solution Consulting, Product Management, and Innovation Enablement groups for
their significant involvement in the creation of this document. Primary content
contributors from these groups include David Ludlow, Dr. Patricia Fletcher, Kouros
Behzad, Brenda Reid, Leslie Apony, Joshua Hill, Debbie McKay, Strausie Markham,
Jackie Ato, Elizabeth Duffy, Trina Page, Tony Ashton, Trachelle Hart, Lisa Meehan,
Meghan Wilson, Bianka Woelke, Joe Herman, Rachael Jordan, Yvonne Baur, Joachin
Foerderer, Paige Cherny, Nicole Skogstad, Anup Yanamandra, Amy Dines, Jackie
Burton, Priyanka Porwal, Dorothy Landry, Susan Thomas, Mia Stanziale, Christy
Robinson, Steven Babcock, Steven Gregory, Preeti Haldipur, and many others who
devoted their time, support, and expertise to make this document a reality.

Like the majority of business leaders today, I
spend the most time thinking about, and worry-
ing about, the people I have and the people I
need. Yet, it’s not because I buy into the idea that
we are facing a shortage of talent globally. The
reality is, it’s somewhat based on the pond you
are fishing in, and I believe this assumption is a
self-perpetuating problem we as leaders help
create. We all have a role in broadening the pond.
It starts with whom you attract and hire, and from
there influences every piece of the people experi-
ence in your business. As the nature of work
changes and digitization disrupts every aspect of
business, we must find ways to build “all-in”
people, regardless of background, ability, race,
or gender. The global talent pool is broader and
larger than ever before. But too often, we fall
victim to our unconscious assumptions and
implicit biases that lead us to look at people nar-
rowly, without seeing, developing, and leveraging
their full potential.
Our focus with SAP® SuccessFactors® solutions
is to streamline and improve the experience of
your HR team, your managers, and your employ-
ees. We are now taking another step in our jour-
ney to create tools that help you detect, prevent,
and eliminate bias in your talent decision-making
processes, to guide you in reducing inequities at
each stage of the employee lifecycle to address
the diversity and inclusion challenges many face.
This document, which highlights ways existing
SAP SuccessFactors solution functionality
minimizes bias, is just the beginning.
This document isn’t simply about improving
diversity, although there are many reasons why
you should – starting with research that shows
more diverse teams are more successful and
more productive. It’s also about understanding
why bias happens and how to address it. The
issues that start with bias in business are the
same issues that undermine employee commit-
ment, performance, and retention. So, creating
more inclusive cultures isn’t just about improving
social fairness and equity; it is also about improv-
ing business performance and growth.
We want you to benefit from all-in people.And
all-in people look, act, and think in individual ways.
We’re excited to be on the forefront of helping
business move beyond bias.
Visit us on Twitter at #businessbeyondbias.
Kind regards,
Mike Ettling
President, SAP SuccessFactors (SAP)
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Foreword

28 Increasing Gender Equity in Who
Applies and Is Hired: Building a
Diverse Workforce
28 What Causes Gender Bias in Recruiting?
30 What Causes Gender Bias in
Hiring Decisions?
31 Using Technology to Reduce Gender Bias
in Recruiting
40 Conclusion
41 Increasing Gender Equity in How
People Are Managed: Managing a
Diverse Workforce
41 What Causes Gender Bias in How People
Are Managed?
44 Using Technology to Reduce Bias in How
People Are Managed
51 Conclusion
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Table of Contents
3 Foreword
6 Introduction
9 Laying the Foundation of Inclusiveness
Through Core HR Processes
and Systems
9 Common Sources of Inequity in Core HR
Processes and Systems
in Your Core HR Processes
18 Conclusion
19 Effectively Leveraging Workforce
Analytics and Data to Address
Gender Equity
19 Why Aren’t Analytics Enough to Move
Diversity Programs Forward?
with Analytics
27 Conclusion

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Is Promoted: Selecting and Retaining
Diverse Leaders
71 What Causes Gender Bias in Who
Is Promoted?
72 Using Technology to Reduce Bias in Who
Is Promoted
75 Conclusion
76 Using Social and Mobile HCM Technology
to Drive Inclusion
76 Barriers to Creating an Inclusive
Workforce Community
77 How to Promote Inclusion at Work
81 Conclusion
82 Conclusion
82 To Learn More
83 References
52 Increasing Gender Equity in Who Is
Developed: Engaging and Retaining a
Diverse Workforce
52 What Causes Gender Bias in Who
Is Developed?
55 Using Technology to Reduce Bias in Who
Is Developed
62 Conclusion
Is Rewarded: Compensating a
Diverse Workforce
63 What Causes Gender Bias
in Compensation?
in Compensation
69 Conclusion

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Introduction
translates into bottom-line benefits, promotes
employee engagement,3 secures satisfied cus-
tomers,4 and addresses critical skills shortages.5
Business leaders that do not leverage the advan-
tages created by a diverse workforce risk falling
behind their market competition and finding
themselves unable to attract and retain the talent
needed to execute their business strategies.
This document specifically focuses on diversity
and inclusion issues related to gender equity.We
chose gender as a starting point for addressing
diversity and inclusion issues for three reasons.
First, it has been extensively studied, so there
is a wealth of research we can draw upon as
we explore different ways technology can be
leveraged to support inclusion and reduce bias.
Second, many of the factors that impact gender
equity are also relevant to supporting other types
of diversity related to things such as ethnicity,
age, or disabilities.Third, it is arguably the most
pervasive and impactful area of diversity and
inclusion, affecting over 50% of the workforce in
many countries.Advancing the equality of women
at work is a global imperative with significant eco-
nomic and financial benefit given that it impacts
such a massive proportion of the workforce.And
yet, organizations all over the world continue to
struggle with providing equitable access to oppor-
tunities for men and women, despite increasing
evidence that it is needed and even mandated in
some regions of the globe.6
Although there have been seen significant efforts
to create more inclusive and diverse workforces
over the years, progress has been slow and lasting
change has been extremely difficult to achieve.7
This is partly due to the complexity of the issue.
Workforce diversity is not one thing that can be
This document explores ways companies can use
recently developed human capital management
(HCM) cloud technology to address workforce
diversity and inclusion challenges that have
existed for decades.There are several things
that make the document unique. First, it takes a
comprehensive look at topics that impact diversity
at every step of the employment lifecycle.These
topics range across organizational design, recruit-
ing, performance management, compensation,
promotion, workforce analytics, and much more.
Second, it focuses on using technology to directly
influence how people make decisions that impact
diversity. It is not about causes of bias. It is about
technology-based solutions that help alleviate
bias. Last, it is about creating ongoing change.
Creating an inclusive and diverse workforce is not
“a problem that you solve.”It happens when you
create and constantly maintain a culture and
associated set of human capital management pro-
cesses that support inclusion and surface and
address biases. Similarly, this document is not
something that we believe will ever be completed.
It will be constantly updated to incorporate new
learning about psychological and economic fac-
tors that impact diversity and new technologies
that can influence these factors.
Workforce diversity and inclusion are not new
topics. But the importance of creating inclusive
and diverse workforces has gone from a“nice
idea”to a critical imperative due to changes in the
nature of work, shifting labor market composition,
and business challenges created by increasing
digital disruption.1 Long past the point of being a
philanthropic, social-consciousness element of
organizational culture, workforce diversity has
become a business imperative for today’s organi-
zations.2 Extensive research shows that diversity

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promoted. It is also impacted by who leaves the
organization as each of these previous decision
points unfold.This is why isolated point solutions
such as setting recruiting targets and analyzing
and adjusting compensation have not created real
change in this area. It is also why having access
to comprehensive workforce data and analytics,
while extremely valuable, has not by itself driven
impactful change in improving workforce diversity.
Even if data shows where in the employee lifecycle
inequity is occurring, it does not clearly show what
interventions or programs will be effective in
changing how those decisions are made.9
influenced directly by fixing one process; rather, it
is the outcome of many small decisions that get
made throughout the employee lifecycle. Often
without realizing it, leaders, decision makers, and
managers are either impeding or enabling diver-
sity in every decision they make about talent,
affecting the attraction, engagement, and reten-
tion of employees from when they first learn about
the company to when they start to rise in the
ranks.8 Workforce diversity is a function of many
things, including how businesses and jobs are
structured, who applies, who is hired, how people
are managed, who has access to development,
who is recognized and rewarded, and who is

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We are committed to building SAP®
SuccessFactors® HCM solutions with features
that enable the detection and prevention of bias
in each of these critical decision points.12 Our
solutions have capabilities that, if used correctly,
can reduce bias and increase equity throughout
the range of HR processes. And new capabilities
are constantly being added thanks to our cloud
technology model. In this document we explore
what these features are and how they can help
combat the bias that has impeded organizational
diversity efforts for decades, helping ensure that
companies are able to attract, engage, and retain
all types of talent in an increasingly diverse world
of work.
In the following sections we describe why bias
happens in each decision point and what compa-
nies can do about it, showing specific ways our
solutions can support those actions. Each section
addresses a different area of HCM that can affect
diversity and inclusion.All are written using the
same format.The first part of each section
discusses different factors that potentially
create bias or impact inclusion.The second part
describes different ways SAP SuccessFactors
solution technology can be used to address these
factors.Although the document can be used in
its entirety to guide more equitable, inclusive
practices, each section can also be read on its
own.We encourage you to scan through the table
of contents and start with whatever topic area
seems most relevant to your current needs.This
document, like SAP SuccessFactors solution tech-
nology, was designed so you can start anywhere
and go everywhere.
Because the challenge is so complex, the solution
must be comprehensive. Organizations must not
only measure their workforce but also change
the way decisions are made around how they
are structured, who applies, who they hire, how
people are managed, who they develop, who they
recognize and reward, and who they promote.
Today, small, often unintentional biases influence
the extent to which women receive access to
opportunities in each of those processes, result-
ing in the unfavorable global workforce trends we
are seeing.8 Tomorrow, if organizations don’t find
a way to detect and prevent bias in the decision-
making process, they won’t survive.
Aside from analytics enabling workforce insights
for business leaders, HCM technology has histori-
cally been underutilized in addressing diversity
challenges. Until relatively recently, these solutions
have suffered from the same problem that many
diversity programs and initiatives do: they were
point solutions designed to enhance one specific
process. HCM technology has now evolved to
support the full range of employee management
processes in an integrated fashion. Programs
designed to hire the best talent, develop workforce
capabilities, and promote strong organizational
leaders can be deployed concurrently with one
shared strategy in mind.10 When these capabilities
are combined with robust workforce data systems
and advanced analytics, organizations are able
to manage their workforces in a way that was pre-
viously not possible. Because these tools already
touch the talent decision points that are so impor-
tant in driving diversity, it makes sense to leverage
them to create equity in each decision-making
process.11

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Laying the Foundation of Inclusiveness
Through Core HR Processes and Systems
giving obligations, this may send the message
that employees’ family commitments are not
relevant to their work. However, collecting this
kind of personal data should also carry a commu-
nication component around how the data will be
used – things like family caregiving obligations
may be relevant to how jobs are structured but
should not be relevant in determining whether
someone is qualified for a position. Although
many companies do not think of it this way, what
employee identification information is collected
and how it is collected impact workforce diversity
both directly and indirectly.
Employee identification becomes even more com-
plex in global organizations. Employee names,
addresses, national IDs, benefits eligibility, job
titles, and many other data fields associated with
employee identification can differ from country to
country in terms of format and structure. Ignoring
how people’s names are written or pronounced
can result in making certain employees feel disen-
franchised from the dominant organizational
culture.There are additional complex issues
around how employees are“labeled”or what data
is collected pertaining to gender, demographics,
and family status – for example, whether it is legal,
safe, or appropriate to track marital status or
the gender of an employee’s spouse.These data
requirements often differ from culture to culture
and from company to company.Whether they are
collected and how they are collected reflect and
influence a company’s approach to managing
workforce diversity.
Most discussions of diversity and inclusiveness
focus on more“strategic”HR processes related
to hiring, managing, developing, rewarding, and
promoting talent. But it is also important to look
at core operational HR methods and structures
that underlie these processes. How a company
defines and organizes its jobs, tracks employees,
and administers payroll and benefits can enhance
or detract from efforts to increase gender equity.
This is particularly important in global organi
zations where local cultural norms and legal
requirements related to workforce diversity can
differ significantly.
COMMON SOURCES OF INEQUITY IN CORE HR
PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS
Core HR processes refer to the systems used
to define organizational structures (job codes,
reporting relationships), maintain basic employee
records (such as name, address, and legally
required data), and administer foundational HR
processes associated with employment contract
fulfillment (such as paying people appropriately
and on time).1 The way these systems are set up
can create, enable, or hinder inclusiveness in often
subtle but critical ways.These can be divided into
three basic categories: employee identification,
job structure, and data access.
Employee Identification
The information that a company collects on its
employees communicates to some degree what
is valued by the company and what they are con-
cerned with.2 For example, if a company fails to
collect information on employees’ family care

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by one gender or another.5 But it is also possible
to categorize jobs in a manner that intentionally
avoids grouping all female employees into the
same areas.As an example, in the United States
HR is historically a“female-dominated”function.6
A company that groups all HR positions into the
same job family risks creating a job family that is
comprised largely of females.An alternative would
be to categorize jobs based on region instead of
functional role.An advantage to doing this is
that it lessens the risk of having job categories
that segregate by gender, which can perpetuate
issues like unequal pay and inequity in access to
opportunities.
Job Design and Data Access for Contract Labor
A complete understanding of the workforce does
not end with a company’s full-time employee
base. As contingent labor becomes a massive
and critical part of the global workforce, job
structure reframing and workforce insights need
to be extended to cover this group as well. The
ability to track talent across the entire workforce
is critical for monitoring and addressing equity
issues. But many companies struggle to maintain
the same level of data on their contingent work-
ers as on their employees.7
Data Access
There is little value in collecting data if it cannot
be readily accessed. Yet, historically many com-
panies have struggled to quickly view and inter-
pret diversity data.8 Having core HR technology
that enables rapid access and analysis of
employee diversity data is critical to effectively
managing and evaluating progress toward the
creation of more inclusive workforces.
Without a core data system that tracks all of
these components, it is extremely difficult to
collect the data needed to comprehensively
evaluate trends related to gender equity across
different countries or collectively as an organiza-
tion. What data is collected about employees
sends a message about what the company
believes is important. And access to data signifi-
cantly hinders or enables a company’s ability to
create strategic plans around gender diversity
issues.3
Job Structure
Many core HR systems include basic job descrip-
tion data such as job requirements or job charac-
teristics (for instance, location or working hours).
Often these systems default to what is assumed to
be“normal.”For example, companies may assume
that all jobs are on-site and full-time unless some
special exception is made.This can result in inad-
vertently making jobs less accessible to people
who may have nonwork obligations.4 Creating
inclusive workforces and equity may mean
reshaping how we think about the typical“job.”Is
there a compelling reason that an employee needs
to be on-site 40 hours a week? In some cases
there is, but in other cases the critical aspects of
a job can be completed in a more flexible manner.
Changes to the“default”position (for instance,
setting the expectation that all jobs are virtual or
part-time unless otherwise specified) can reframe
core assumptions about what a person needs to
do in order to be qualified for a role.
Another thing to consider is the way jobs are
categorized in terms of job families and reporting
relationships.Jobs are often categorized in a way
that results in certain job families being dominated

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USING TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE GENDER BIAS
IN YOUR CORE HR PROCESSES
The following are some things customers can do
in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, our
core HR solution, that support more inclusive
practices around employee identification, job
structure, and data access.
Employee identification: Use localization ser-
vices to facilitate easy data entry in accordance
with regional customs and legislation. Using
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, HR teams
can ensure they are following local practices when
entering employee data. In the example below,
some of these features can be seen in action.
Name data entry formats, for instance, can differ
from country to country. In this case the employee
works in Brazil.We also see the address format
specific to Brazil, as well as employee ID which
follows Brazil’s ID requirements.

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SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central contains a
name pronunciation feature that allows employ-
ees to record themselves speaking their own
name, which other people can hear upon visiting
their profile.

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Localization features carry other advantages as
well.They allow HR staff to easily see whether they
are collecting data and taking action in a way that
is legal and advisable for the region that employ-
ees work in. From an employee perspective, local-
ization features allow them to customize their HR
system experience in a way that meets their pref-
erences in terms of things such as language,
currency, dates, time zones, and bank information.
Showing sensitivity to people’s personal prefer-
ences communicates a welcoming appreciation
for diversity within the workforce.

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effective fulfillment of nonwork responsibilities is
not going to be compatible with an eight-hour-
work-day, forty-hour-work-week, in-the-office
schedule.11 But what are the reasons the role
requires eight hours a day in the office? If they
don’t extend beyond“this is how we’ve always
done it,”there is significant opportunity for HR to
restructure roles and achieve greater equity in who
fills positions in the company. Creating jobs that
allow employees to perform the critical aspects of
the role without creating unnecessary restrictions
that preclude people from accessing those jobs is
a key way HR can contribute to the diversity and
inclusion of an organization.4 The job profile builder
tool within SAP SuccessFactors solutions enables
the identification of what the most critical aspects
of a job are, providing a foundation for HR to deter-
mine how an employee can perform those aspects
and structure positions in a way that allows for this.
Job structure: Use the job profile builder to
focus on the most critical aspects of your
company’s roles. A significant issue driving
workforce gender inequity is the tendency for
women to step back from their careers due to
family care obligations.9 There are certainly orga-
nizational culture factors at play here – women
who do not feel engaged or welcome in an organi-
zation are more likely to leave. But there is also a
strong possibility that women may need to leave
at some point to manage nonwork obligations.
Men may also experience this, but because
women remain the primary family caregivers in
most regions of the world, this continues to be a
largely female issue.10
At some point in their career many women
evaluate the requirements at work and in their non-
work lives and determine that, at least for a while,

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Data access: Use SAP SuccessFactors
Employee Central to collect and report on the
data you need to inform diversity strategy. This
solution allows for robust collection of diversity
data. Localization features help ensure that the
data being collected is legal and compliant with
local policy. And in many cases, workforce
reports can be easily generated.

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When it comes to driving greater gender equity,
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central can be
used in a number of ways. First, collection of
gender-relevant data is a critical step toward
being able to analyze key differences in things
like pay, development, and promotions. Report-
ing on gender data is possible beyond just the
traditional male and female categorization. In
addition to those two genders, employees may
also self-identify as “unknown,”“undeclared,” or
“other.” Second, SAP SuccessFactors Employee
Central allows for highly configurable employee
profiles, which increases the kind of data manag-
ers and key decision makers can access. Below is
an example of an employee snapshot that con-
tains equity-relevant information, such as where
the employee stands in her pay range relative to
benchmark data. This kind of insight forms the
basis for managers to act in a way that will
increase equity for their employees.

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into the larger organizational structure, ensuring
visibility into this segment of workers and allow-
ing them to be included in reports, driving further
action that impacts equity across the entire base
of employees regardless of work status.
Many companies struggle to get the same level
of insight for their contracted or contingent
workforce as they have for their full-time workers.
Fortunately, SAP SuccessFactors Employee
Central allows for contingent labor to be brought

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CONCLUSION
Foundational HR decisions have a significant
impact on bias in an organization. Enabling new
thinking in employee identification, job structure,
and data access is critical for engaging diverse
talent. Without the right data and structure in
place, it becomes impossible to inform and sup-
port the actions that organizations need to take
to drive lasting change in their workforces.
How can you measure the impact of your gender diversity initiatives? Consider tracking the
following metrics:
•• End-of-period headcount by gender
The number of people employed by the organization at the end of the reported period, analyzed
by gender
•• Male-to-female staffing ratio
The gender balance of the workforce
•• Male-to-female staffing ratio – managerial
The gender balance of managerial positions in the workforce
•• Staffing rate – part-time by gender
The number of part-time employees by gender as a percentage of the total workforce

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Effectively Leveraging Workforce Analytics
and Data to Address Gender Equity
But less success has occurred in the world of
diversity and inclusion. Some common reasons
for this are described below.
Readily available data creates liability for
companies. The most obvious application of
workforce data analytics is to identify areas
of concern related to diversity and inclusion.
But this data can also be seen as a significant
area of risk for employers by making diversity
equity issues more visible, discoverable, and
readily documented.4 It can take years to fully
understand and resolve equity issues surfaced by
workforce analytics data.5 But people who gain
access to the data, whether internal employees
or outside counsel, may argue that the company
hasn’t adequately addressed the issues in a
timely manner and decide to use the data to file
legal claims against the company. It is one thing
to have an equity problem but not be aware of it.
It is another to be fully aware of the problem yet
be seen as not doing enough to resolve it. The
challenge is how to make use of workforce data
to understand and resolve the causes of inequity
without increasing the risk that this data might
be used to accuse the company of unfair
employee treatment.
As technology becomes more prevalent in all
phases of the employment lifecycle, companies
are increasingly able to track data across an enor-
mous range of workforce metrics.With a click of a
button, leadership teams can access a sea of
information about the diversity status of the
employees in their organization.The value of
workforce data is that it allows companies to
better understand the flow and composition of
talent found in their organizations.1 The challenge
is figuring out how to effectively interpret and act
on this data.2 This has been a major issue when it
comes to gender equity. Data on gender inequity
levels often seems to change little from one year
to the next.3 Data tells us what is happening, but it
does not necessarily tell us what it means or how
to change it. Data does not become truly powerful
until it is converted into knowledge, understanding,
and action. Focusing on this conversion is the key
to the effective use of workforce analytics technol-
ogy to increase gender equity.
WHY AREN’T ANALYTICS ENOUGH TO MOVE
DIVERSITY PROGRAMS FORWARD?
Cloud-based analytics solutions have enabled
companies to achieve some remarkably sophisti-
cated workforce insights and improvement.

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of issues around who can see what data and for
what purposes. Data that might be helpful to cer-
tain people in certain contexts could be harmful
in other contexts. For example, there is both a
right and a wrong time and audience when it
comes to sharing data on compensation deci-
sions that suggests gender inequity. Due to the
sensitive nature of diversity data, some compa-
nies choose to restrict managers from accessing
data that could make them more aware of equity
issues in their area rather than risk having this
data possibly “fall into the wrong hands.”8
Data alone cannot change behavior.The availabil-
ity of accurate, consistent, and accessible data
has greatly increased over the past few years with
the development of workforce analytics technol-
ogy.The expected outcome of these tools was
that they would create greater insight and there-
fore greater progress toward addressing issues
impacting workforce diversity and inclusion. But
on the whole, this is not what we’ve seen.9 Well-
intentioned managers armed with information and
the understanding of the importance of maintain-
ing a diverse workforce still fail to make decisions
that support diversity. One issue is that companies
don’t put easily digestible data at the hands of
managers at the point in time in which they are
making decisions.10 Lack of information at the
point of action has stunted the progress of work-
force analytics in driving workforce equity.
Data interpretation is difficult. It is easy to be
overwhelmed by workforce data. Simply knowing
what data to focus on can be a challenge. Making
sense of the data can also be difficult particularly
if the company has no basis or benchmark to
define whether certain numbers should be con-
sidered to be relatively good or bad compared to
other organizations.6 Incorrectly interpreting
data or focusing on one set of numbers while
overlooking another creates the risk of leading
decision makers in the wrong direction.
Data is not provided to the right people at the
right time to create change. Given its sensitive
nature, data about workforce equity is often
closely held by HR and the executive leadership
team.7 As a result, managers who are actually at
the point of making the decisions that impact
equity may not be given access to this data in a
way that can influence their actions. For example,
managers may not realize how their decisions
about promotions or compensation are impact-
ing equity between males and females on their
team. They might know equity is important in a
general sense, but they aren’t provided with data
in a format that allows them to self-monitor how
their own decisions or the decisions made by
others in their organization are impacting equity.
Because diversity and inclusion data is both sen-
sitive and valuable, it can be difficult to determine
how to manage its access. There is a whole host

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Determine the critical data you need using
our guide. The SAP SuccessFactors 100 Critical
Human Capital Questions guide is a stand-alone
resource designed to help organizations deter-
mine which issues are the most important to
explore when managing toward an inclusive work-
force. Eight questions in particular are designed
to help companies leverage data to guide creation
and implementation of diversity strategies.
WITH ANALYTICS
Several resources and features within the
SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics and
SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Planning solu-
tions directly address many of the challenges
that hinder companies’ ability to make impactful
progress on diversity and inclusion issues.

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Utilize benchmarks as a basis of comparison.
SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics con-
tains over 14 pages of key performance indicator
benchmark reporting options that enable cus-
tomers to determine where they stand on key
metrics in comparison to other organizations.
These standardized reports make it easy to
quickly and consistently track diversity perfor-
mance on a variety of dimensions, informing a
basis for action where it is most needed.

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center for leaders and decision makers in an
engaging format. With this prebuilt executive
analysis, leaders can have access to an on-
demand snapshot of key diversity metrics at any
point in time. Once the template is created, the
data can be easily refreshed to keep the report
up-to-date with current information.
Show leaders and decision makers the data
that matters using a diversity analysis tem-
plate. Companies can create templates within
the solution that present the most relevant data
in a consumable and easily understandable way.
These templates can be created with diversity
in mind so the most important data is front and

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tions’ key metrics and have the data that matters
on their front-page view. One application of this
functionality is to create a “diversity dashboard”
that includes key metrics relevant to your com-
pany’s diversity goals.
Bring the right data into your diversity dash-
board. SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics
enables analytics that can be used to populate
prebuilt dashboard templates. Customers can
configure these dashboards with their organiza-

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Using headlines is one way to give managers
guidance by providing the relevant insights at the
right point in time. This directly addresses the
issue of providing managers with the right data at
the right time so equity issues can be addressed
when and where they occur in the organization.
Use metrics and headlines to ensure managers
are taking action. The “headlines” capability
within SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics
can be configured to appear on a page or home-
page tile. Headlines deliver relevant diversity
trend information at pertinent decision points
throughout the SAP SuccessFactors solutions.

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decisions around hiring, performance manage-
ment, development, compensation, and promotion
of the people on their teams. System administra-
tors can determine which metrics to pull in to each
component and who is able to see them.
Provide relevant data at the point of decision.
Customers with SAP SuccessFactors Workforce
Analytics can configure their talent management
components to contain process-relevant data at
the push of a button. Managers can access this
data as they use the solution to inform their

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This has historically been a challenge for organi-
zations – there is a gap between the data that
could inform diversity strategy and actions
and the data (or lack thereof) that does. To
truly maximize the value of workforce analytics
technology, it is crucial that data is seamlessly
woven into processes to influence employment
decisions that support workforce diversity.
CONCLUSION
The daily decisions made by managers heavily
influence the gender balance of your organiza-
tion. In order to increase workforce diversity,
individual managers need to be armed with the
right tools and the right information at the right
time to enable them to make the best possible
choices to improve diversity and equity at work.
A key advantage of having a sophisticated workforce analytics solution is that you can not
only gain insight into who is currently in your organization but also who is leaving. The SAP®
SuccessFactors® solution has a wealth of turnover and termination metrics that HR teams can
analyze to determine whether organizational practices are resulting in the loss of diverse talent.
Some examples of metrics that can be tracked in this effort include:
•• Voluntary termination rate by gender
– The relative rate at which men and women are leaving the organization
•• Average workforce tenure by gender
– The relative length of time that men and women stay in the organization
•• Employee engagement by gender
– Average engagement scores for male and female employees
Within the solution, these metrics can then be compared to other HCM analytics covered in
subsequent sections of this document, such as average performance ratings, salary, and promotion
rates, to determine whether bias may be influencing these key decision points and whether this is
causing people to leave.

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Increasing Gender Equity in Who Applies
and Is Hired: Building a Diverse Workforce
of study that people pursue from a young age.5
But there are aspects of the recruitment and
candidate attraction experience that companies
can and should control in order to ensure their
applicant pools reflect the desired diversity of
their workforce. These are aspects in which
bias can unintentionally steer certain groups
of candidates away.
Career sites and other organizational informa-
tion in the recruiting process can enable or
impede diverse candidate attraction. In today’s
increasingly social world, candidates are often
aware of an organization’s reputation and culture
before they ever pursue a job at that organiza-
tion.6,7 A company that markets its diverse, inclu-
sive culture will be more successful at attracting
diverse talent. The opposite is true as well – if a
company’s culture doesn’t emphasize equal
access to opportunities, candidates can and will
pick up on this message.8 For example, career
sites that feature stereotypical male phrases and
images and females portrayed in noninfluential
roles are communicating something about their
culture and what job applicants can expect from
working there. These sorts of career sites are less
likely to attract talented women for key roles.
Conversely, intentionally designing career sites to
demonstrate inclusive, diverse messages around
what company employees and leaders look like
can help organizations expand their potential
talent pool to be more diverse.9
Recruiting is where the active quest for a diverse
workforce begins. If the right mix of diverse
candidates aren’t attracted and hired, it will be
impossible to have a balanced, diverse workforce
no matter how good subsequent corporate diver-
sity and inclusion programs may be. Attracting
diverse candidates, keeping them engaged
throughout the hiring process, and ensuring bias
does not influence whether they are ultimately
hired are fundamental aspects of creating a truly
diverse and inclusive organization.
Although attracting and selecting diverse
candidates is top of mind for many organizations,
research has shown that characteristics of a
company’s recruiting and hiring processes can
inadvertently cause bias, resulting in members of
specific demographic groups being consistently
overlooked for job opportunities. Below we
describe the nature of the biases in these pro-
cesses.Then we discuss how SAP SuccessFactors
solution technology can be used to address them.
WHAT CAUSES GENDER BIAS IN RECRUITING?
A wide range of factors impact equity in recruit-
ing practices. This begins with applicant talent
pools. A common reason that more women aren’t
hired for key positions is because women don’t
apply.1,2 This is partly due to factors outside of an
organization’s control. Certain occupations,
fields, and industries continue to be thought of as
“male” and “female,”3,4 and these ideals have
been shown to influence the interests and areas

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most relevant qualifications that are required for
someone to be successful in that job.
Job descriptions can be written in ways that
repel members of certain demographic groups.
Companies often advertise jobs using phrases
such as “Work for our dominant firm!”,“Thrive
in a competitive environment!” and “Crush the
competition with us!” because this language is
thrilling and allows job candidates to see how
exciting this position can be. Unfortunately, aside
from the fact that it goes beyond what is truly
required for success in the role, this kind of
language tends to attract male applicants and
repel females. Considerable research has shown
that there are words and phrases that are male-
friendly (“competitive,”“hero,”“we want only
the best”) and female-friendly (“trustworthy,”
“supportive,”“nurture the relationship”). Not
surprising, men tend to prefer jobs described
with masculine terms and women gravitate
toward jobs described using feminine terms.
Ideally, organizations should craft their job
descriptions to be neutral.12 This can be achieved
by using words such as “collaborative”,“intuitive,”
and “capable,” all of which communicate desired
candidate characteristics but have not been
shown to cause bias against either gender.
Alternatively, companies may seek to balance
the use of masculine terms with equal numbers
of feminine terms.
To attract new kinds of talent, you may need to
recruit in new places. Many organizations that
find successful hires from certain sources con-
tinue to use those same sources to find further
talent.The challenge is such sites may be dispro-
portionately dominated by candidates with certain
demographic characteristics (such as overwhelm-
ing numbers of male candidates). Companies
that want to build diverse workforces may need
to actively explore new recruiting sources or risk
continuing to build candidate pools that are demo-
graphically homogenous.10 At the same time, it
only makes sense to pursue a recruiting source if
it provides quality candidates.A balance must be
struck between candidate diversity and candidate
quality. Striking such a balance requires actively
measuring the quality and nature of candidates
from different recruiting marketing sources.
Women are less likely to apply for jobs when
they don’t feel they meet all the qualifications.
Considerable research has shown that men tend
to apply for jobs where they meet most but not
all of the listed criteria, but women tend to only
apply for jobs where they are confident they
meet all of the criteria (and sometimes more).11
This results in women not applying for positions
that they may actually be qualified to perform.
Organizations can address this by writing job
descriptions in a way that highlights only the

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Women may be less effective interviewers than
men, at least in how we “traditionally” think of
the interview. The purpose of a job interview is
not to assess if the candidate is good at inter-
viewing but to assess if he or she is good for the
job. Unfortunately, research has found that some
personality characteristics related to gender can
hurt women during interviews.15 Research shows
that interviewers are more likely to favor people
who boast about their past accomplishments,
even when a nonboaster has the exact same
accomplishments.16 Men are overwhelmingly
more likely to boast in an interview setting.
So what can organizations do about this, given
that people are naturally predisposed to have
biases? Some companies have started doing blind
assessments and interviews in which decision
makers are not aware of gender, race, or other
demographic characteristics of job applicants.
The challenge of this approach is it represents a
major change to how we currently select talent.17
Another and less disruptive approach is to ensure
hiring decisions are based on assessments of
objective, job-relevant criteria rather than intuitive
impressions of candidate quality. In addition, com-
panies can ensure multiple people are involved in
the interview and hiring process to avoid any one
individual’s bias overly influencing who gets hired.
WHAT CAUSES GENDER BIAS IN
HIRING DECISIONS?
Ensuring diverse candidate pools is the first step
toward hiring a diverse workforce.The second
step is making sure hiring decisions are unbiased.
The challenge is that people involved in making
hiring decisions often show unconscious prefer-
ences for candidates based on non-job-relevant
factors related to what the candidate“looks like”
or how they interpret candidate behaviors.
Interviewer bias can get in the way of objective
candidate assessments. There are many rea-
sons interviewers and decision makers may allow
biases related to a person’s characteristics to
influence a decision that should be made based
solely on their accomplishments, qualifications,
and potential. All people are biased to some
extent. People carry internal assumptions about
what a “typical” or “ideal” person looks like
for a certain role, and this can influence their per-
ceptions of a candidate even if the influence is
unintentional.13 Some of these assumptions are
built around the status quo. If a certain kind of
person was effective in that role in the past, inter-
viewers and decision makers are more likely to
view the same kind of person as the best option
for filling the role in the future.14

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career sites that will maximize both the diversity
and quality of your applicant pool. This starts
with creating a customized look and feel that
reflects your company’s commitment to work-
force diversity. The career site builder also allows
you to create prequalification questions that
enable candidates to enter basic information
prior to filling out a more comprehensive job
application. These questions are an excellent
opportunity to communicate the aspects that are
critical for success in the role and address any
preconceived but false assumptions that might
discourage certain groups of people from apply-
ing. For instance, you can clearly indicate what is
and is not necessary for job success in terms of
candidate qualifications or work requirements.
IN RECRUITING
There are several features within the SAP
SuccessFactors HCM Suite that can help in
attracting and hiring diverse candidates. Below
are nine specific features that can help ensure
your organization attracts a diverse talent pool
and allows equitable access to employment
opportunities at your company.
Use the career site builder tool to support a
diverse, inclusive recruiting message. The
career site is one of the first things your job
applicants see. The career site builder tool in the
SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing solu-
tion provides a range of functions to help create

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Utilize recruitment sourcing reports to
determine where you are advertising your
open positions and where you could find more
diverse, qualified candidates. Recruiting report-
ing shows recruiters the sources they are most
using, allowing them to explore the possibility of
ramping up efforts in relatively underused areas.

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can be used to capture this information and form
the basis for creating job descriptions that focus
solely on these critical elements and remove any
criteria that are not true job requirements.
Use the job profile builder to capture the critical
aspects of the role. Job descriptions should
contain only the information that is critical for
successful performance in a role. The job profile
builder in SAP SuccessFactors Talent solutions

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enough to offer interview training. You must
ensure interviewers have successfully completed
this training. The most expensive decision you
ever make about an employee is the decision to
hire him or her. Make sure the people making that
decision know how to do it effectively.
Leverage learning management systems
(LMS) to deliver bias training to your interview-
ers and hiring managers. Interviewers and hiring
managers can develop effective, unbiased inter-
viewing approaches only through proper training.
LMS can be used to deliver consistent, impactful
training to these influential people. It is not

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candidates.The SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting
solution allows for assessment scores to be
brought in to the candidate selection process.The
solution also allows side-by-side scoring of candi-
dates that incorporates their assessment scores.
Use validated assessments to ensure fair,
consistent applicant measurement. In order to
ensure candidates are being selected based on
their performance against job-relevant criteria,
hiring managers should administer valid assess-
ments that allow for unbiased comparisons of

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viewers ask the right questions and extract the
right information in the interview process. Follow-
ing these guides helps ensure that the questions
being asked are relevant to the role and consis-
tent across job applicants.
Utilize the interview guide to help ensure
consistent, job-relevant interview protocol.
The interview central tool within the SAP
SuccessFactors Recruiting Management solution
contains competency-based interview guides,
configurable by company, to help ensure inter-

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panel or team of interviewers to include in the
process. This tool also puts the job description
front and center for the interviewer team to
help them identify the best talent based on job-
relevant criteria.
Use the interview central tool to form a panel
of interviewers. A common way to reduce the
effects of individual interviewer bias is to have
multiple interviewers involved in the hiring pro-
cess. Interview central allows you to create a

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the drop-off of diverse candidates in particular.
If diverse candidates are self-selecting out of
the process after a certain point, this may be an
indication that something about that step con-
tains bias that discourages those candidates
from continuing on. This can provide information
for where to focus when building more equity in
your company’s recruiting and hiring.
Track your diverse applicants through the
recruiting process pipeline to ensure they
stay engaged. Reporting capabilities in SAP
SuccessFactors Recruiting enable you to track
candidates through the recruiting process, noting
where they drop off. This is used as a basis of
information to craft a more engaging recruiting
process. Companies can also use this to track

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gendered language, to comply with local legis
lation that has outlawed gender-biased job
descriptions. This solution also enables custom-
ers to easily keep track of relevant legislation.
Find and eliminate gender-biased language
in job descriptions. Customers that have the
SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Posting solution
are currently able to identify whether their job
postings advertised in France and Spain contain

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process, sourcing candidates from new places,
intentionally crafting job descriptions in a way
that reduces bias, and mitigating interviewer and
decision-maker bias, organizations can ensure
they are setting the stage for equitable access to
key job opportunities.
CONCLUSION
In order to build and maintain diverse workforces,
companies need to attract and hire diverse talent.
Shifting the recruiting paradigm can have a
significant impact on your diversity program, your
culture, and your bottom line. By communicating
a diverse, inclusive message in the recruiting
How can you measure the impact of your recruiting and hiring practices? Consider tracking the
following metrics:
•• Net hire ratio by gender
Total number of external hires that replaced terminated employees within each gender category
•• External hire rate by gender
The percentage of the current workforce hired from external resources, analyzed by gender
•• Female applicant conversation rate analyzed by recruitment stage
The number of female applicants successful by recruitment stage
•• Number of women hired per hiring manager
The average number of women hired by each manager in the company
•• Recruitment source by gender – percentage of female applicants by recruiting source
The percentage of females hired by recruitment source, helping identify which recruitment chan-
nels provide the best opportunities for women to join the workforce

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Increasing Gender Equity in How People Are
Managed: Managing a Diverse Workforce
ment process where gender bias occurs, as well
as how organizations can apply HCM technology
in this important area.
WHAT CAUSES GENDER BIAS IN HOW PEOPLE
ARE MANAGED?
Women’s performance is described differently
than men’s. People tend to describe the perfor-
mance of women using more communal terms
(for instance,“helps,”“assists,”“facilitates”),
while men’s performance tends to be described
using more action-oriented terms (“drives,”
“executes”).4 This bias in language impacts how
people’s contributions are assessed. For example,
being described as an action-oriented individual
usually leads to higher performance ratings for
men but not necessarily for women. For women,
higher performance is more closely associated
with being community oriented and helpful, but
only up until a point.When it comes to achieving
the highest performance ratings, it appears that
masculine characteristics are valued more than
feminine characteristics. So women who“act like
women”in terms of being communal and helpful
will be seen as good but not great employees.5 To
make matters worse, women who start to“act like
men”in terms of being more action oriented are
often rated lower than men who are displaying the
exact same behaviors.6
Members of different demographic groups tend to
have somewhat different experiences in the work-
place. Much of this is due to differences in ways
they are managed. Supervisors’implicit or explicit
biases often influence how they approach the
management process, from informal coaching
to formal performance evaluation.1 Since many
workplace opportunities, such as promotions,
distribution of rewards, and developmental oppor-
tunities, are directly influenced by an employee’s
manager,2 it can be particularly problematic if
managers, intentionally or unintentionally, use
biased methods to evaluate, coach, and assess
employee performance.Workplace experiences
related to how employees are managed are also a
key factor in driving retention.Workforce diversity
is created not just by attracting diverse talent but
by retaining and engaging diverse employees. If
diverse employees are having a poor experience
at work due to how they are managed, they are
much more likely to quit or otherwise disengage
from the organization.3
Gender has been shown to be especially relevant
when it comes to manager bias. Research has
shown that the experiences of men and women
tend to differ when it comes to how their perfor-
mance is assessed, as well as in access to the
opportunities that result. In this section we outline
some of the aspects of the performance manage-

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sense of community contributes to the organiza-
tion’s strategic goals. While men receive more
specific feedback terms (“he’s good at calling
attention to important issues”) that are linked to
specific business goals (“his actions directly
impact revenue growth”). Because they do not
get clear feedback about how their behavior is
impacting performance, women are often at a
disadvantage when it comes to guiding their self-
development. In contrast, men’s performance
feedback tends to provide more specific guid-
ance on what they can do to be more successful
in their jobs.
Vague performance feedback does not just nega-
tively impact women’s career development but
also affects their sense of job satisfaction and
work engagement.9 To reduce bias in this area,
organizations should ensure that all employees
have clear performance objectives that are tied
to business-level goals. The presence of clearly
defined job objectives lays the groundwork for
how employees are evaluated and coached and
decreases the risk of women receiving less con-
structive feedback than men. Managers should
also be provided with tools and training to ensure
they provide all employees, both men and
women, with specific and actionable behavior-
based feedback.
Obviously, the ideal situation is to have all employ-
ees compared in a consistent way. But research
shows that gender biases can make comparing
women and men somewhat akin to comparing
apples and oranges, with the apples having the
advantage. Eliminating this bias completely may
be impossible because it is largely unconscious.7
But its influence can be reduced by ensuring
employees have clear performance objectives
and well-defined criteria for determining whether
someone is meeting role expectations. Ideally,
these criteria will not favor masculine characteris-
tics over feminine characteristics. Performance
evaluations should also emphasize clear and
tangible goals, as goal accomplishment is more
visible and thus less influenced by implicit biases.
Last, definitions of performance should be
expanded to include pro-social behaviors such as
helping and assisting, which tend to be performed
more by female employees but are often dismissed
as being less important.
Women and men receive different kinds of
feedback. Women tend to receive performance
feedback that is vague and general, while men
tend to receive performance feedback that is
specific and directly tied to business objectives.8
For example, the performance of women is often
described using more communal terms ( “she’s
a good team player”) without defining how this

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Unsupportive supervisors can disproportion-
ately impact the work-life balance of female
employees. Organizations in many regions have
made great strides in providing flexible work
options, particularly around time off for parenting
duties, which is now mandated in many parts of
the globe.14 However, providing these kinds of
programs does not ensure employees will use
them. Many employees are hesitant to take
advantage of flexible work options due to con-
cerns about how their careers will be impacted.15
Research has shown that the attitudes and
behaviors of the immediate supervisor are hugely
influential here – when supervisors are support-
ive, employees are more comfortable taking
advantage of flexible work options and are more
confident that their careers will not be harmed.16
Although all employees are likely to be impacted
by the level of supervisory support, because
women remain the primary family caregivers in
many regions, they may be especially vulnerable
to conflict between work and family obligations.17
In order to eliminate gender bias in this area,
organizations can both teach and hold supervisors
accountable for exhibiting supportive behaviors
that enable employees to balance work and
nonwork commitments.
Manager bias can influence how performance
is rated.10 People tend to rate people more favor-
ably in a job if they look like the stereotypical
image of someone in that job. For example, man-
agers may rate women more favorably in nursing
roles since the traditional conceptualization of
nurses is female. Conversely, they may rate men
more highly in police jobs or leadership roles,
positions more often associated with men.11
There is significant debate whether managers are
capable of completely casting these unconscious
biases aside and accurately and fairly evaluating
employees’ contributions in the workplace.12 But
what can be done is to stress the use of clearly
defined performance criteria when evaluating
employees. In essence, make sure managers are
not evaluating the person but instead are evalu-
ating what the person has accomplished or done.
Another method to decrease unconscious bias is
to incorporate other sources of information, such
as objective criteria or customer and peer evalu-
ation data in the performance assessment pro-
cess. There is the risk, however, that customer
and peer evaluations may display some of the
same unconscious biases as those found in man-
ager evaluation.13

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senior leaders can“cascade”goals by defining
specific goal criteria and then assigning goals to
their direct reports who may, in turn, assign them
to their team, and so on. Employees with goals
cascaded down to them will then be held
accountable for some component of what their
manager is accountable for.When these goals
are brought into the performance management
form during the review cycle, this gives managers
a well-defined basis for evaluating employee
performance, regardless of gender or other demo-
graphic characteristics. Because the cascaded
goals are tied to higher-level business objectives,
performance can be appropriately assessed
against those objectives, which helps support
more specific, action-oriented feedback for all
employees.This reduces both bias against women
in terms of how they are evaluated, and bias
against women in terms of inadvertently providing
men with more important and business-relevant
goals than women.
USING TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE BIAS IN HOW
PEOPLE ARE MANAGED
SAP SuccessFactors solutions offer a number of
features that can help reduce manager bias.
Below are seven specific ways the solutions can
be used to reduce bias in how people are man-
aged. It is worth noting that these reflect best
practices in managing people in general. So not
only do these processes decrease bias against
women, they increase performance of all employ-
ees regardless of gender.
Utilize cascaded goals to create clear, business-
relevant performance objectives. The goal
management component in SAP SuccessFactors
Talent solutions enables employees to set clear,
specific goals.The tool contains features to help
support goal quality, including a configurable goal
library that enables employees to select from a list
of prewritten objectives.To ensure that employee
goals are aligned to the organization’s strategy,

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behaviors. Conversely, if a job requires more
action-oriented, decisive behaviors, then includ-
ing this in the competency description will make
it easier for women to display these behaviors
without being negatively evaluated as acting “like
a man.” Instead they will be seen as “acting like a
high-performing employee.” Using competencies
to provide clear, behavior-based definitions of
what it means to be a top performer enables
more fair performance evaluations, which in turn
supports greater equity in decision making
around development, rewards, and promotions.
Incorporate behavioral competencies into the
performance cycle. Performance forms can be
configured to include a behavioral competencies
component. These competencies should be
based on organizational values or desired char-
acteristics in a role. Incorporating these into the
performance review cycle helps ensure that
employees get “credit” for displaying behaviors
that contribute to organizational functioning and
progress, regardless of whether they are mascu-
line or feminine in nature. For example, if a job
requires more caring behaviors, then both men
and women will be equally evaluated on these

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behavioral terms where employees are performing
effectively and what they can change to be more
successful in their roles.While performance feed-
back should be personalized to the employee
receiving it, the writing assistant/coaching advisor
can help show managers what kind of information
they should be providing when crafting quality
performance feedback.This encourages managers
to give the same kind of feedback to all employees
regardless of gender and lessens the implicit
tendency of managers to avoid giving women
specific, job-relevant feedback.
Use the writing assistant/coaching advisor
to guide performance feedback specific to
employee objectives. Giving clear, specific
performance feedback is challenging for many
managers.18 Embedded in the performance
management tool is a writing assistant/coaching
advisor that helps managers craft effective feed-
back for different aspects of an employee’s job.
This helps managers provide specific feedback by
focusing on the objectives and competencies that
matter for the job, then providing phrasing and
suggestions that communicate in well-defined

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bias in two ways.13 First, it decreases the risk of
relying on data from a single manager who may
have a limited perspective on employee perfor-
mance. Second, performance data coming from
teammates and coworkers is likely to emphasize
helping, collaborative behaviors that women
often display more often than men, yet tend to
get less credit for in their performance reviews.
Use 360-degree review to capture other
sources of employee performance data. Com-
panies can utilize the 360 tool to collect feedback
from other sources, such as peers, subordinates,
and even external customers or partners. While
there is a risk that 360 data may contain the
same sorts of biases found in manager data, the
use of multisource feedback data can reduce

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employees may be unwilling to directly confront
a manager about biased practices. Anonymous
360-degree reviews can be used to create a way
for employees to provide their perspective on
manager fairness, holding managers account-
able. Insights from this tool can lead managers
toward learning and development courses that
help them manage employees more equitably.
Use the 360 tool to ensure manager fairness.
Most discussions of manager fairness in perfor-
mance evaluations focus on the evaluation
process itself. But it is also valuable to focus on
the manager. Managers who are not treating
employees in an equitable manner may be
unaware of their actions. This is because biased
behaviors are often unintentional and because

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mance management functionality, which allows
employees to highlight their performance accom-
plishments throughout the year and track work
activities that they have completed. That way,
when managers are asked to evaluate an employee,
they can look at the employee’s history of perfor-
mance accomplishments and not just rely on
what is an inherently limited and biased memory
of what the employee has done.
Use continuous performance management to
capture and track actual performance accom-
plishments. Gender bias does not just influence
how we evaluate people; it also influences what
we remember about them.19 Managers are likely
to selectively remember information about
employees that conforms to their preexisting
biases about that employee. This issue can be
addressed in part by using continuous perfor-

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manage employees in a fair and supportive
manner. This training can be further supported
by embedding short training vignettes and tips in
the performance management component.
Train on supportive, unbiased management.
Many managers receive little if any ongoing
training on how to evaluate, coach, and support
employees.20 The SAP SuccessFactors Learning
solution can be used to deliver training on how to

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using technology to help create well-defined
goals that support business objectives, incorpo-
rating behavioral and technical competencies
into overall assessments of performance, lever-
aging suggestions from the writing assistant/
coaching advisor tool to drive further specificity
in performance feedback, collecting multiple
sources of performance feedback, facilitating
ongoing feedback and coaching, training manag-
ers how to fairly evaluate and support employees,
and holding managers accountable for displaying
supportive behaviors.
CONCLUSION
Research has shown that men and women tend
to be managed and evaluated differently at work.
This can put women at a disadvantage when
it comes to access to performance-based
opportunities. This disparity is often a result of
unconscious biases as opposed to intentional
discrimination. It is much more likely to occur
when an employee’s role is not well defined,
because this leads managers to fall prey to
implicit biases when assessing performance in
that role. Fortunately, there are a range of ways
technology can lessen this risk. This includes
How can you measure the impact of your performance management processes? Consider track-
ing the following metrics:
•• Performance rating gap analyzed by gender
The difference in performance perception comparing self-assessment and peer assessments to
manager rating for each gender group
•• Average performance rating by gender
Overall average performance rating for all appraisals by gender
•• Performance by manager contact time, analyzed by gender
The performance ratings of employees by the amount of “contact time” they have with their
managers in the continuous performance management tool for each gender group
•• Number of one-on-one meetings, analyzed by gender
The number of manager coaching sessions held by managers for each gender group
•• Percentage of goals categorized as being “high priority” per gender
The percentage of high-priority goals allocated to each gender group, helping determine whether
impactful work is being equally spread across male and female employees
•• Employee engagement score by gender
Measurement of overall employee engagement based on day-to-day experiences and work
environment, analyzed by gender
•• Caretaker’s leave by gender
The percentage of caretaker’s leave taken within the reporting period by gender

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Increasing Gender Equity in Who Is Developed:
Engaging and Retaining a Diverse Workforce
cally pursue, and implicit manager bias. The
following explores each of these in more detail.
Men are more likely to receive developmental
training because of implicit assumptions that
men’s careers or the organization will benefit
more from it. Implicit conceptualizations of what
makes a “successful leader” tend to associate
masculine characteristics with leadership success,
and as a result men tend to be favored as recipients
of formal leadership development.1 Equity in
development requires organizations to move
beyond manager bias and ensure everyone has
access to the development opportunities that
best match their skills, capabilities, and interests.
In many ways one can view selecting employees
for high-value development opportunities in the
same way as selecting employees for new job
opportunities. In this sense, the same rigor in
selection needed to reduce bias from staffing
decisions should also be applied to selecting
employees for limited and highly desirable leader-
ship development opportunities. Unfortunately,
many companies use relatively unstructured
processes to identify and nominate employees
for development programs, and as a result, many of
these decisions tend to fall prey to implicit biases.2
Developmental programs and learning opportu
nities are critical in building employee skills,
capabilities, and careers.Access to these opportu-
nities ideally depends on merit and interests. But
research has shown that men are the more likely
recipients of career development, especially when
the development program is leadership focused.
The downstream impact is very clear – we see
significantly more men than women at top levels
of organizations in part because more men than
women were developed as leaders.
In this section we highlight some features that
companies can leverage in an effort to ensure
access to developmental opportunities is based
on job performance and career aspirations rather
than on unrelated demographic characteristics.
WHAT CAUSES GENDER BIAS IN WHO
IS DEVELOPED?
There are a number of factors that create bias
in development opportunities for women. These
include disparities in how performance is
assessed, perceptions and realities related to
women wanting or needing to step away from
their careers due to family care obligations,
associated assumptions about what sort of
development opportunities women can realisti-

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early-career women and early-career men the
same access to people in leadership roles so
that women have an equal chance of developing
mentor relationships through informal means,
which has shown to be more effective than
formal mentorship assignments. Executives in
leadership roles can also be encouraged and
guided on how to build effective mentor relation-
ships with male and female employees.
Development programs often favor people
who are perceived to have fewer nonwork
obligations. Perceptions and realities around
employees’ family and other nonwork obligations
heavily influence the extent to which develop-
mental opportunities are made available to them.
For example, research has shown that many
women who would like to gain international work
experience through expatriate assignments tend
to be underrepresented in the expatriate labor
pool because managers assume their nonwork
responsibilities will hinder their ability to take on
this kind of experience.2 This assumption does
not affect the opportunities that men receive to
the same extent. In order to address this bias,
organizations can enable managers to assign
developmental experiences based on merit and
employee interest in acquiring those experiences,
rather than on biased conceptualizations of who
will be able to take them on.
Learning relationships and communities tend to
segregate by gender. There has been a significant
increase in women’s leadership development pro-
grams across organizations in the past decade.
Although these programs have put women on
the map for receiving leadership training and
opportunities, they are limited in a number of
ways. Perhaps most significant is the fact that
many of these programs are founded and man-
aged by other women, which limits the reach of
the conversation largely to other women, when in
reality the highest-level leaders in most organiza-
tions tend to be men.3 When it comes to leader-
ship development and access to opportunities,
mentors and sponsors have a powerful influence.
Men’s professional networks tend to include other
men, many of whom are more likely to hold posi-
tions of power and open doors to developmental
and leadership opportunities through informal
means.4 These networks are critical to forming
mentor relationships needed to reach higher
levels of leadership. Research has shown that
women have a more difficult time finding high-
powered mentors, largely because they tend to
network with other women and there are relatively
few women at the top to help guide their careers.5
Organizations can help ensure equity in access to
developmental opportunities by creating mixed-
gender learning communities and relationships.
The key is creating communities that provide

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Organizations fail to create opportunities for
employees to gain their first critical develop-
mental experiences during onboarding.
Research has shown that one thing reliably
predicts how engaged and effective people will be
in their jobs over the long term: their experience
during the onboarding process. Employees that
make the right social connections, get the right
training, and integrate quickly into the company’s
culture are positioned for success from the very
beginning.8 A poor onboarding process can be
detrimental for anyone, but women may be espe-
cially impacted by the lack of clarity that can
result. Without additional support, women tend
to form social networks that include other
women, which as previously mentioned can
impede them when it comes to accessing infor-
mal development opportunities down the line.4
Additionally, adding immediate value in a new
role requires confidence and support, which an
effective onboarding program can help instill.9
Women who do not receive this support in their
onboarding experience may not find it in other
aspects of the workplace, especially in male-
dominated work environments or when filling a
position that others may implicitly perceive as
being “male” (such as a leadership position).10
Women may self-select out of development
programs because they don’t feel engaged or
welcome. Mixed-gender learning communities
can be a double-edged sword if the learning and
development content is not designed to be rele-
vant to the experiences and interests of everyone
involved. Research shows that people learn best
from teachers and content that are relatable.6 If
development learning is administered solely by
male teachers, or if the content is heavily focused
on the experiences and interests of men, organi-
zations risk failing to appropriately engage
women. Further, considerations around schedul-
ing and access to training and development are
frequently ignored. For women who do bear more
nonwork and family responsibilities, development
programs may be inaccessible due to when and
how they are delivered.7 To address these issues,
organizations should facilitate development and
learning around a variety of concepts, interests,
and learning styles. Characteristics of instructors
administering training should be varied to appeal
to a broader learner audience. Further, develop-
ment and training opportunities should be
designed to meet the needs of learners’
schedules.

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Challenge manager bias with training. There is
mixed evidence on the effectiveness of training
to decrease bias, but a company can use training
to reinforce a culture where career development
is based on potential and not gender. Requiring
all managers to complete this type of training
sends a strong message. This kind of course
can be administered through the learning
management system.
USING TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE BIAS IN WHO
IS DEVELOPED
Development is a critical access point to further
opportunities, such as promotion and career
progression. If developmental experiences favor
one particular demographic group over others,
organizations will fail to build and maintain diversity
at the top level. Below are six specific ways
customers can utilize SAP SuccessFactors
solution technology to drive equity in access
to developmental opportunities.

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and development experiences as well as ensuring
equitable access to learning content. SAP Jam
and an LMS can be integrated to ensure employ-
ees are gaining access to the information they
most need, either through joining a learning com-
munity group on SAP Jam or through accessing
LMS courses that then point them toward relevant
learning communities on SAP Jam.
Build gender-balanced learning communities.
Technology can be used to ensure that both men
and women are involved in development conversa-
tions and forming connections that help further
their careers.The SAP Jam™ social software plat-
form can be leveraged to create communities
where all members are encouraged to interact,
collaborate, and share, driving informal learning

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could be reviewed be a committee of people
rather than the individual manager.
Similarly, making visible the development experi-
ences employees have completed can increase
their eligibility for further experiences. Further
visibility can be added through the employee
profile, where employees can be encouraged to
enter information related to skills and capabilities
and geographic mobility, which can then be found
via talent search functionality. Below is an exam-
ple of an employee leveraging the career develop-
ment tool to identify development opportunities
and to showcase developmental experiences he
or she has already had, as well as an example of
employee skills and interests recorded in the
employee profile.
Let employees’ interests and experiences guide
the developmental opportunities they receive.
Given the risk that implicit manager bias has on
hindering development of women leaders, it may
not make sense to have manager nomination
be the sole factor that determines whether
employees have access to development programs
and opportunities. Various components of
SAP SuccessFactors solutions enable employees
to guide their own development experiences. In
the career development tool, for instance, employ-
ees can identify career aspirations as well as skills
and capabilities they would like to develop, which
can be configured in terms of access to eligibility
for certain roles or experiences.While it may not
be possible to give everyone the developmental
experiences they want, these self-nominations

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(for instance, videos) can ensure that both
male and female learners are engaged. Finally,
SAP Jam can be used to give everyone a voice
in how learning and development programs are
structured. If learning professionals are unsure
how to create content that engages both men and
women, they can ask – and SAP Jam provides a
platform for employees to share their perspective.
Build learning and development experiences
that engage everyone. The LMS tool provides
several options for creating learning content that
is equally accessible to both men and women.
SAP Jam can be leveraged as an informal learning
tool where employees who are not necessarily
learning professionals can share expertise and
content. Encouraging both male and female
employees to create informal learning resources

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danger of creating an “always-on” culture, which
could perpetuate burn-out among people with
significant nonwork obligations. But done correctly,
it enables employees to more effectively pursue
self-development opportunities because they can
fit these around other obligations.
Provide remote access to learning and devel-
opment opportunities. Allowing employees to
access training or other development resources
outside of work via mobile devices or through
remote logins may make learning more accessible
to employees with significant schedule constraints.
This approach has to be balanced against the

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training, and development they need to start
adding value in their roles. Below is an example
of a group in SAP Jam that serves as a central
location for new hires to access important docu-
ments, training, and critical milestones in their
initial development.
Ensure employees receive the initial support
they need via onboarding, LMS, and SAP Jam.
In addition to ensuring new hires are making the
right social connections in the company, custom-
ers can use the SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding
solution in conjunction with LMS and SAP Jam to
help ensure new hires are getting the support,

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opportunities they can access, enabling the cre-
ation of learning and development content that
appropriately engages all learners, and providing
remote access to learning opportunities, organi-
zations can create greater equity in who receives
career-building development.
CONCLUSION
There are many factors that can negatively
impact the development of women relative to
men. By challenging manager bias, increasing
the prevalence of gender-balanced learning
communities, allowing employee interests and
capabilities to determine the developmental
How can you measure the impact of your company’s developmental processes? Consider track-
ing the following metrics:
•• Number of development goals by gender
The average number of development goals analyzed by gender
•• Goal completion by gender
The average number of goals completed within a reporting period by gender
•• Mentoring coverage by gender
The number of employees who currently have an active mentor in the workplace, by gender
•• Average annual training hours by gender
The annual number of training hours per employee analyzed by gender
•• Learning activities completion rate by gender
The percentage of all learning activities completed during the reporting period analyzed by gender
•• Training channel delivery mix by gender
The mix and breakdown of the different course offerings via various channels taken up by employ-
ees. This information helps identify the uptake of learning for different groups by delivery channel
(such as classroom, e-learning, and others).
•• Training course abandonment rate by gender
The number of courses started but not completed, analyzed by gender
•• High-potential employees by gender
The number of high-potential employees in the organization by gender

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Increasing Gender Equity in Who Is Rewarded:
Compensating a Diverse Workforce
Female-dominated occupations tend to pay
less than male-dominated occupations.4 As
occupations become more female-dominated,
average pay decreases.5 In other words, the more
women who work in a certain job role, the less
companies tend to pay for that role. This is par-
tially because companies currently base pay on
market rates found in the general labor force.
Since women are paid less in general, increasing
the number of women included in benchmark
salary surveys to determine compensation for a
particular role will tend to decrease average pay
levels for that role. One logical solution to this
issue is to change the referent benchmark group
used to determine pay levels to ensure it contains
an equal number of men and women (by includ-
ing a broader range of job types, for example),
or to weight pay averages to account for the ten-
dency for women to be paid less than men in the
same role.
Women tend to receive smaller bonuses and
pay increases than men despite having the
same performance. This is especially true in
male-dominated fields.6 One of the main reasons
for this is implicit, unconscious biases that lead
people to perceive men as being more impactful
than women. There are two logical and recom-
mended solutions to overcoming this implicit
bias. First, ensure that pay decisions are based
on clearly defined performance criteria. Perfor-
mance evaluations tend to be far less biased than
compensation decisions because they focus
on “what people have done” instead of “who
people are.” Second, make people visibly aware
of potential signs of bias when they are conduct-
ing compensation reviews so they can take action
to decrease bias before actual compensation
decisions are made.
Research has shown that on average, women are
paid significantly less than men.These differences
occur not just at the overall national level, with
women in the United States making an average
of 79 cents for every dollar men make,1 but also
within organizations and job levels all over the
world.2 As the number of women in the workforce
steadily grows, companies and governments are
increasingly calling for action to address this pay
inequity.3
One solution to this problem is to look at the
systems and tools companies use to guide com-
pensation decisions and determine how they
can be designed to reduce the sources of bias
against women. In this section we highlight some
features in SAP SuccessFactors solution technol-
ogy that companies can use to address gender
inequity in pay.
WHAT CAUSES GENDER BIAS
IN COMPENSATION?
Before discussing solutions, it is important to
understand the factors that lead to pay inequity
between men and women.This is a highly complex
and well-researched topic with many different
opinions. However, the following are considered
to be relatively well-accepted research findings
that explain in part why women tend to be paid
less than men.We also offer what we believe are
reasonably logical solutions to these issues,
although the relative impact of certain solutions
is also subject to some debate.

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IN COMPENSATION
The following are five specific ways companies
can use SAP SuccessFactors solution technology
to decrease compensation biases.
Start new employees off on a fair note by offer-
ing equal pay. Compensation for new employees
can be based on many factors. But when this is
primarily driven by past salary, inequity in pay
between men and women tends to get perpetu-
ated.8 Compensation reports that show existing
individual and team salary information (preferably
for both men and women) are critical to consider
when determining starting salary.The pay of new
employees should be adjusted so that newly hired
men and newly hired women working in the same
jobs both start out at the same level of pay.
Women are less likely to negotiate compensa-
tion decisions than men.7 For a variety of reasons
women tend to be reluctant to advocate for
greater compensation.A logical solution to this is
to train managers and employees on techniques
for effectively discussing compensation, and to
create a culture that reinforces to employees that
it is both okay and appropriate to discuss com-
pensation equity rather than avoiding the topic
because it might create a“difficult conversation.”
These three factors are not the only sources of
gender-based pay discrepancies, but they are
significant contributors. Using technology-based
solutions that mitigate the impact of these fac-
tors on gender bias will considerably reduce pay
inequity within an organization.

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reduce inequity caused by the historic tendency
to have lower compensation for job roles that are
primarily filled by women. Second, this form can
highlight individuals who have lower compa-ratios
and take steps to adjust their pay to create more
equality across the employee population. It is
possible that this will result in making more
aggressive increases for women since women are
more likely to be at the low end of the pay scale.
However, it is very important that any pay adjust-
ments be made based on an employee’s actual
compa-ratio and not because of an employee’s
gender.
Adjust pay to avoid incidental inequity. Below is
a form in the SAP SuccessFactors Compensation
solution that is used to illustrate employee pay
levels relative to average ranges for different job
categories (commonly referred to as“compa-
ratio”).There are two ways this feature can be
used to uncover and address inequity associated
with the tendency to pay women less than men.
First, compensation professionals can use this to
ensure that the benchmarks used to calculate
compa-ratios are based on norm groups that
include equal numbers of men and women or
weight averages to account for existing pay dis-
crepancies between men and women.This will

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receiving different levels of pay. This can create
an early warning indicator of potential biases that
may create inequity between men and women.
It is critical to include assessments of performance
at this step, as this helps promote rewarding
employees who contribute more to the organiza-
tion. This is both sensible from a business
perspective and fair from a justice perspective.
But it also decreases the danger of people feeling
pressured to change pay solely based on gender.
Equity is about rewarding equal work with equal
pay; it is not about paying some people more just
because they belong to a certain demographic
group that has been historically underpaid. Of
course, for this to work, companies must use
unbiased methods to evaluate employee contribu-
tions and performance (which we discussed in
the previous section).
Link pay to performance criteria and heighten-
ing awareness of pay trends associated with
gender. The tool shown below compares
employee pay to employee performance and
provides a summary sense of employee pay
adjustments across a large team. This tool helps
address gender equity in two major ways. First, it
calls out the relationship between employee pay
and employee performance. This is important
because research shows that compensation
decisions made without clear performance crite-
ria tend to be far more biased against women
than compensation decisions that are clearly
tied to independent performance evaluations.6
Showing pay decisions alongside performance
assessment data makes it apparent when com-
pensation allocation is out of sync with actual
employee contributions. Second, it provides a
visual cue of how many women versus men are

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determines pay increases based on percentage
of current salary will tend to grow the biases
that were already there. For example, if a man is
paid US$100,000 for a job and a woman receives
$90,000 for the same job, then any pay increase
plan based on percentage of existing salary will
immediately favor the man. Put another way, if
the man and woman both get 3% raises, the man
will receive $3,000 and the woman will receive
$2,700. And every year the difference in pay
between the man and the woman will grow larger.
Base increases on absolute value instead of
current pay percentages. The compensation
worksheet shown below is used by managers to
designate pay allocation to employees on their
teams. The worksheet has been configured to
focus on absolute value of pay allocations and
does not list pay increases in terms of percent-
age of current pay. By avoiding the use of per-
centages, this worksheet reduces the tendency
to perpetuate existing biases in pay over time.
This is because any compensation strategy that

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devoted to having a conversation about pay
levels. This can create an expectation that
employees and managers should talk about pay,
and it removes the stigma that asking to discuss
one’s pay is inappropriate. This guide also
includes a link to a training course for managers
that helps them facilitate these discussions
effectively and pay fairly. Administering this kind
of training can help reduce inequity in managers’
decisions around pay.
Encourage employees and managers to have
productive discussions about pay. Employees
and managers can be enabled to have effective
conversations regarding compensation, regard-
less of gender or other personal characteristics.
The SAP SuccessFactors Compensation solution
can create the basis for this enablement. In the
example below, employees and managers are
guided through the company’s annual compen-
sation cycle, with a step that is specifically

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CONCLUSION
Gender bias in pay is ultimately perpetuated by
how compensation decisions are made. Most
companies use some form of technology to guide
compensation decisions. By effectively leveraging
features in solutions such as SAP SuccessFactors
Compensation, companies can significantly con-
trol the root sources of bias that lead to gender
inequity in pay.
How can you measure the impact of your company’s pay practices? Consider tracking the
following metrics:
•• Average annual salary by gender
The average base salary by gender
•• Performance-based pay differentials by gender
The average base compensation paid to top performers for every dollar paid to midrange to low
performers, analyzed by gender
•• Annual bonus by gender
The average annual bonus by gender
•• Male to female stock-holding ratio
The number of stock shares held by male employees for every one share held by female
employees
•• Average spot bonus by gender
The number of employees receiving a spot bonus and average bonus amount, analyzed by gender
•• Compa-ratio by gender
Comparison of an employee’s actual base salary and the midpoint of his or her salary structure,
analyzed by gender
•• Upward salary change rate by gender
The percentage of employees who received a salary increase, analyzed by gender

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