Growing focus on diversity and inclusion (D&I) has been tagged as a by-product of the glut of US multinationals establishing operations in Ireland over the past decade, but a DCU spin-out is attempting to reverse the direction of travel and become a leader in the global effort to make workplaces more reflective of societies.

Founded in 2016, Inclusio attempts to solve several problems experienced by D&I practitioners, specifically: how to collect diversity data; how to help companies collect evidence of the impact of their D&I efforts; and how to help employees to disclose personal data and give their thoughts on their workplace while maintaining privacy.

Founder Sandra Healy describes Inclusio as combining technology, psychology and AI and “bringing a scientific, evidence-based approach to measuring diversity and inclusion.”

Employees at client organisations are encouraged to give daily feedback through its secure platform in 3-5 minute sessions over 15 days. There’s also a nudge learning component, whereby employees are served articles, videos and personal stories to help them better understand what it is like for people who are different from themselves.

Healy says the combination of those three things – being counted, providing feedback, and nudge learning – “empowers people” and “democratises diversity and inclusion” but also helps clients to “identify their strengths and weaknesses and where they need to focus their efforts."

In Association with

Inclusio is backed by Enterprise Ireland and a number of Irish venture capitalists and Healy, who founded the DCU Centre of Excellence for Diveristy & Inclusion following 20 years in the telecoms sector with Eir, BT, O2 and Vodafone, spent four years researching and developing the Inclusio platform, prioritising best practice around data privacy and GDPR.

Healy also brought together a global team of organisational psychologists with “diverse perspectives” to build Inclusio’s “ethical AI” engine, which isn’t self-learning in order to maintain integrity and avert undue bias.

Inclusio’s clients are predominantly in the global professional services sector and insurance. Insurers, including FBD, RSA, 123.ie and Irish Life, this week announced they would use Inclusio technology to launch the Valuing Openness, inclusive Culture & Equity (VOiCE) benchmark to help the sector to measure, track and action D&I.

VOiCE was created by Inclusio in collaboration with the Centre for Insurance Risk Data Analytics (CIRDAS) at South East Technological University (SETU) Carlow and the Ireland South East Financial Services Cluster (ISEFSC), and it also has the endorsement of the government through the Department of Finance.

Inclusio is also working with Ulster University and Stanford University, effectively the academic arm of Silicon Valley, on a project around accommodations for neurodivergent staff, ie those with autism and conditions such as ADHD.

Neurodivergence has come to the fore in the past three to five years, according to Healy, who reports that Inclusion has seen an exceptional increase in the number of users self-reporting as neurodivergent.

Neurodivergent employees generally stayed silent and didn’t look for accommodations in the past, but Inclusio is tapping into the expertise at Ulster University and Stanford to provide support and help get the best out of neurodiverse people at work.

It is one of a number of growing challenges facing large firms with distributed workforces, but issues vary from country to country.

In Ireland, which doesn’t have the same history of colonialism or immigration as the UK and US, the issue of gender inequality has been the main battleground this century, but with the rise of big tech, 18% of workers are now of migrant descent.

The language and narratives around race and ethnicity used in those countries wouldn’t work in Ireland, but Healy believes the absence of a painful legacy around slavery and colonisation gives Ireland “the opportunity to be a successful, integrated multicultural society” by taking an intersectional view of diversity.

Ultimately, employees that might otherwise feel silenced or marginalised are the ones Inclusio is most intent about reaching and providing with a safe and secure channel for giving workplace feedback.

Inclusio is now “very, very close” to the announcement of a Series A funding round and has begun to expand into the UK, US and Canada. Healy says the next 18-24 months will be focused on international expansion and consolidation.

“The feedback we get over and over again is there's nothing else like this in the world, and … we've combined the technology, the psychology and the artificial intelligence together to bring something to the world that is very unique, which is a scientific, evidence-based approach to measuring D&I,” she says.

“So it's exciting times, I have to say, and we're very grateful for the customers that we have on board now, because they are the leaders that will help us take a platform global.”