Measuring and Achieving Inclusion: Diversity Engagement Survey + Please Tell Us Your Story of Inclusion

The Diversity Engagement Survey (DES) was launched in February 2015 and implemented again in 2018. It assessed the climate of health care sites University of Pennsylvania Health System and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as an educational site, the Perelman School of Medicine.

The survey presented opportunities for improvement on organizational cultural competence or inclusivity. In efforts to elucidate what factors contributed to lower performance in organizational cultural competence, we analyzed what respondent characteristics were driving those scores. Thereafter, we conducted a qualitative study (Please Tell Us your Story of Inclusion) to better understand contributors of inclusion in our organizations. Respondents who self-identified as females, minorities, and LGBTQ were far less likely to rank the cultural competence of their organization as meeting their needs as compared to males, non-Hispanic whites, and heterosexuals respectively. The DES and Please Tell Us narrative project have yielded three subsequent projects exploring the data and its impact on employees at Penn Medicine.

Learn more about Inclusion and Workforce