How to Collect EDI Workforce Data

Why is data important?

Understanding the reasons why you should be collecting EDI data can help you determine which data is worth collecting for your business. There are many benefits to collecting equity, diversity, and inclusion data including:

• Identifying gaps and inequalities – EDI data can help highlight workforce inequalities, biases, and inclusion gaps or opportunities for improvement, whether that is improving data availability to represent a specific group or by highlighting a pattern of attrition, for example.
  
  
• Setting measurable goals – to act upon a strong EDI strategy, your business will need measurable and actionable goals that are realistic. By collecting accurate data, you can establish a baseline for what good looks like in your business, as well as implement a realistic timeline for achieving it.
  
  
• Tracking progress – EDI is a constantly evolving approach that requires a commitment to improvement overtime. By collecting regular data and feedback, you’ll be able to track your progress, benchmark against industry standards, and celebrate your business’ achievements.
  
  
• Enhancing employee trust and engagement – transparent reporting can show true commitment to fairness and inclusion, demonstrating and evidencing how the changes you’re making are influencing your employees’ day-to-day and improving trust in your initiatives.
  
  
• Meeting legal and regulatory compliances – collecting EDI data allows your business to evidence your work and ensures that you’re operating within industry and legal standards to workplace fairness and inclusion.
  
  
• Driving innovation and performance – the introduction of EDI initiatives has proven to influence feelings of belonging, employee loyalty, and productivity. By collecting data, you can establish a correlation between your business activity, operations, and goals alongside your inclusivity activity. 

How to Capture EDI Data?

Capturing your business’ EDI data effectively requires careful planning, timing, and sensitivity to ensure that it is accurate, well-documented, and a comfortable process for your employees. A few methods of collecting EDI data include:

• Voluntary self-identification surveys – through anonymous or confidential surveys, you can collect key EDI-related data including key protected characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. It is important that you are transparent about why you’re collecting this data and how it will be used.
  
  
• HR and recruitment systems – HR software and applicant tracking systems (ATS) can have integrated EDI data fields so that each employee is accurately represented in your systems from the start of their employment. Accurate representation means using a system that allows your diversity data to evolve as your workforce does, including allowing individual changes in health, marital status, and other key data. It is essential that this information is privacy protected, and only authorised personnel have access.
  
  
• Pulse surveys – these can include questions around inclusion, belonging, and awareness of EDI to gather crucial feedback and qualitative data from your workforce. This information is crucial for developing your strategy and improving inclusivity.
  
  
• Exit interviews – both quantitative and qualitative data can be gathered within an exit interview to understand both who is leaving the company and their reasons behind it. This can help identify if there is a pattern of consistent behaviour that needs corrective action or for highlighting gaps in your current approach to ensure you can cultivate an environment of belonging.
  
  
• Focus groups – opening the dialogue to your entire workforce can ensure that everyone who wants their opinion heard can. This can provide experiential and contextual data, providing an insight into the behaviours, attitudes, and opinions of your broader workforce and help you explore the real barriers to inclusion within your company. 

When to Capture EDI Data?

There’s opportunity throughout an employee lifecycle to collect EDI data that is meaningful and a true representation of your workforce. In fact, regularly collecting this data is essential for ensuring that your workforce continue to remain represented accurately. However, due to the personal nature of the information, it does require sensitivity and careful planning. Some key times to collect inclusion and belonging data include:

• During recruitment – expanding to a more diverse talent pool is essential for strong recruitment. By collecting EDI data after initial applicant screening, you can ensure that you’re offering equitable opportunities to work. To ensure fairness of screening, an ideal applicant process gives as much anonymity to all applicants so that identity is only know at the point people have been screened in for interview, this can help minimise bias as early as possible in the recruitment process.
  
  
• Onboarding – collect basic demographic information to ensure that your workforce is accurately represented within your systems.
  
  
• Regular data collection – whether you’re completing annual EDI audits or bi-annual progress tracking, establishing a system of continual reporting and data collection can ensure measurable insights into your initiatives and success.
  
  
• After major changes – accurately assess the impact of major initiatives by collecting opinion and awareness information through surveys.
  
  
• Engagement surveys – integrating EDI questions into your pre-established engagement surveys can help align your initiatives alongside business goals and ensure that EDI metrics are linked to employee satisfaction.
  
  
• Exit interviews – these are essential for establishing whether EDI gaps, challenges, or barriers have contributed to your employee attrition activity.

What if People Don’t Want to Share Sensitive/ Personal Data?

EDI information can be difficult to collect due to the sensitive and personal nature of the data. Many employees might not feel comfortable or safe providing this level of information and so it is important that as a business you’re welcoming open discussions, providing a safe environment for all employees, and applying EDI best practices. Some best practices include:

• Transparency – ensuring that all employees understand the importance of this data, where it is stored, and how it will be used. If you’re using anonymised surveys, ensure that you’re transparent about this and accurately communicating any risks and protections to employees when sharing this information.
  
  
• Anonymity – where possible, providing anonymous surveys and data collection can help encourage honest feedback. You should openly share who this information will be available to, whether that is only your people teams or to wider management.
  
  
• Inclusivity – the language that you use is essential when writing data collection surveys or communicating EDI. Make sure that you’re using inclusive language and allow self-description so that your employees feel comfortable sharing their own experiences and choosing options that accurately represent them.
  
  
• Compliance – ensure that your business is fully compliant with UK legislation including the Equality Act 2010 and UK GDPR. Communicating these legal requirements and how your company is compliant can also encourage trust and openness.

How to Use EDI Data for Actionable Insights

It is not only important to collect this raw data, but EDI information can be used to create meaningful strategies with actionable insights for future initiatives and changes. Some ways to use EDI data to improve fairness and representation within your workplace include:

• Analysing data – from representation to pay equity and other key areas of EDI, you should be comparing your data by key demographics to understand the barriers and opportunities presented to your current workforce.
  
  
• Identifying key issues - assessing your raw data for patterns and gaps can highlight areas for improvement, current success metrics, and key areas to monitor going forward.
  
  
• Sert goals and KPIs – create transparent and measurable goals with timelines to ensure accountability and engagement across your business. By integrating your EDI goals into your business approach, you can make it a common goal that drives change rather than an afterthought.
  
  
• Communication – EDI data is essential for communicating both internally and externally. By sharing this data in a responsible way, you hold your business accountable and increase trust within your brand image.
  
  
• Review – EDI should be continually evolving to constantly provide the best for your workforce. To gain actionable insights into your workforce, you should be reviewing data and policies on a regular basis, whether that is directly informing new inclusive policies or supporting policy development to ensure the growing and changing needs of your workforce are met.

How Can Recruitment Agency Partners Help?

Whether it is establishing key metrics for your business’ workforce or sharing talent pool diversity, recruitment agency partners can support your EDI data collection through any stage of employment. A strong recruitment agency partner will have the technology and experience to provide guidance during your EDI development and support its implementation and reporting.

Looking to make a data-driven difference? Learn how our advisors can support your EDI strategy and workforce management by contacting us today.

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[1] CIPD in Partnership with Reed (2022) Inclusion at work 2022, Inclusion at work 2022: Findings from the inclusion and diversity survey 2022. Available at: https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/reports/2023-pdfs/inclusion-at-work-exec-summary_tcm18-112951.pdf (Accessed: 04 September 2025).