AWEI Benchmarking: Scores Not Outcomes

ACON publishes benchmarking slides intended to use for presenting and contextualising organisational results back to the teams. Instructions within the document suggest deleting any irrelevant slides and using the AWEI results scorecard to add commentary.

The AWEI results focus on comparison and competition.

By presenting success in terms of only aggregate scores. ACON is able to shift focus away from benchmarking against expected outcomes and benefits for an individual organisation.

Download – AWEI 2021 Recognition Tiers

Download – AWEI 2020 Recognition Tiers

Interpreting the Benchmark Document

The benchmarking document provides an overview of participation and results.

• Participation Growth
• Results for ‘small employers’ (< 500 employees)
  • Points allocation
  • Participation growth
  • Benchmarking results
  • Results tables (by industry)
  • Score distribution / recognition tier
  • Results tables (by recognition tier)
• Standard Employers
  • Points allocation
  • Participation growth
  • Benchmarking results
  • Results tables (by industry)
  • Score distribution / recognition tier
  • Results tables (by recognition tier)

Reporting Practices Obscure Results

A number of reporting practices make it impossible to use this document to make comparisons between organisations.

• Organisations can be listed under multiple classifications, so the numbers can appear skewed.
• Categories for small and ‘standard’ organisations are not aligned, making comparisons difficult
• Some organisations are ‘not for publication’
• ‘Platinum’ organisations have reached gold level for consecutive 5 years
• All state organisations are grouped together, regardless of domain
• Apparent repeated sections

The Leaderboard

This document sets out the AWEI results in a comparative leaderboard format. This is designed to encourage competition by focusing on the numerical score in comparison to other organisations.

All graphs encourage focus on growth not outcomes.

Focus On Score Not Maturity

A typical maturity model might situate the score on a progressive scale, rating progress across different areas. By contrast, the AWEI benchmark reports only the total score, pitting organisations against top performers in their field.

ABC’s Score Review Presentation

The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) used their scores in the 2019 AWEI to create a review presentation that breaks down their performance in detail.

The focus of the presentation is entirely on closing the gap in terms of points. There is no discussion about the appropriateness of the measures in the AWEI, or of measuring whether the activity is effective at producing a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Similarly the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet data shows a focus on matching what “other organisations doing to achieve higher scores year on year” (page 3). Organisations such as Department of Home Affairs & Australian Border Force and IP Australia (IPA) converted their AWEI scorecards directly into documents to track their activities against each point-scoring item.