Equity Audit
WORK180’s Equity Audit will give you a holistic view of your organization’s progress across the 10 key standards driving equity in the workplace.
It’s another way we’re helping Endorsed Employers to know better, so you can do better.
- Complement or build your DEI strategy
- Benchmark against other organizations
- Gain clear metrics for internal buy-in

Request a consultation today

The Equity Audit has helped highlight what gaps we need to close before we can expect candidates to apply.”
WORK180 Endorsed Employer
Signs your organization could benefit from an Equity Audit
- Your organization is not aware of where its gaps are
- You struggle to gather sufficient or tangible metrics to build a business case for change
- Your organization often only measures policies and representation numbers, which aren’t the real drivers of change
- Your organization has no way of tangibly measuring and benchmarking progress in diversity, equity and inclusion

How does it work?
1
Working with one of our DEI Account Managers you will provide basic information about a range of key indicators and initiatives in place within your organization
2
We’ll use this information to generate an organizational score out of 100% and work with you to build you an action plan to maximise your progress and impact
3
We’ll provide resources, training and guidance to help minimise your gaps, leverage your strengths and improve your overall employer value proposition
Key benefits of WORK180’s Equity Audit

Holistic view of organizational commitment to equity, highlighting gaps and strengths

Unique benchmarking data for assessing employer value proposition

Tangible success metric for measuring progress and securing cross-business stakeholder buy-in

Validation & support creating DEI strategies and Gender Equity Action Plans

Targeted guidance on best and next practice policies, initiatives and activities

Intersectional lens on key equity and inclusion standards
What you’ll love about our Equity Audit
It considers hard indicators of DEI progress, along with initiatives in place to drive progress
It is designed to be completed within a couple of hours with simple response formats
It will save you time researching best practice initiatives and assessing impact
It will give you a central destination for organizational data points, initiatives and outcomes

“The Equity Audit has certainly been an eye opener for some other things we could be tracking or implementing.”
WORK180 Endorsed Employer
Frequently asked questions
What type of information do you capture in the Equity Audit?
Our Equity Audit is structured into sections, based on the 10 key standards that drive equity in the workplace. These are:
- Inclusive hiring practices
- Representative leadership
- Flexible working arrangements
- Pay equity
- Shared caring responsibility
- Strategic commitments
- Employee voice & ERGs
- Career development
- Inclusive and anti-discriminatory culture
- Employee support and safety services
Within each of these subsections we consider a range of indicators (these are usually a number or percentage) and initiatives (policies, processes, practices etc. that your organization has embedded).
We don’t require lengthy explanations – most responses are captured as a tick box, a yes/no response, a number or a percentage.
How long does it take to complete the Equity Audit?
This is designed in a way that should take no more than a few hours to complete. However, it can vary depending on what stage your organization is at and which stakeholders you need to involve.
We don’t require lengthy explanations – most responses are captured as a tick box, a yes/no response, a number or a percentage.
We recommend gathering the key stakeholders together and working through the response in an initial one hour session (a WORK180 DEI Account Manager can facilitate this if helpful). This will help you knock off the majority of the responses, and identify any items that may need follow up.
You might like to include your senior HR lead, a representative of your recruitment team, an employer branding or marketing representative, and a senior management representative.
Can my organization do the Equity Audit if it’s not already endorsed by WORK180?
Yes, absolutely. We’re eager to support employers at all stages of their journey with defining and strengthening their diversity, equity and inclusion strategies. Request a call on the form above and talk to our team about how we can help.
Can my organization be endorsed by WORK180 without completing a full Equity Audit?
At the moment, we are continuing to offer endorsements without a full equity audit. However over the course of 2022, we will be transitioning to a model where a full or partial equity audit will be a requirement for endorsement.
An essential part of our philosophy is knowing better in order to do better, and we are able to deliver employers the best ROI and impact with this holistic approach.
As this is a new offering, we are currently working with all of our Endorsed Employers to complete their equity audit.
What if we don’t know all the answers at this stage?
The Equity Audit is designed to help you identify your gaps – it’s ok if you don’t currently have the answer. This might be something we work with you to build a plan around capturing for the future.
What happens with the information we provide in the Equity Audit?
First and foremost the holistic snapshot provided by the Equity Audit is designed to help us work with you to draw up an action plan to power your business’ DEI goals.
However, a key tenet of WORK180’s approach is empowering women through transparent and easily accessible information. That’s why we will also showcase selected information from the Equity Audit on the employer profile pages on our website. This information is based on what the global WORK180 community has told us is most valuable to them.
We are mindful that every organization has different considerations for what they are happy to share publicly. We are firm believers in progress not perfection and all of the employers we endorse and showcase through our employer directory are committed to this approach.
While we will require some information to be shared as mandatory, we are happy to work with employers to identify a suitable approach to manage any concerns with what is shared publicly.
How will the information be scored and benchmarked?
The information is scored based on a confidential scoring algorithm developed by WORK180’s expert team, global DEI Advisory board and with consideration to global best practice.
Each of the ten standards will achieve a section score, and this will be used to create an overall score out of 100%.
We recognise there are different priorities and options available to organizations depending on their size. For this reason, we use different but relative scoring methodologies based on company headcount, ensuring that benchmarking efforts are as fair as and consistent as possible.
There are also differences in standards, regulations and approaches in every region, so although the data points gathered in the Equity Audit are largely the same in every region, we will generally benchmark employers on a country basis to better contextualize results.
Once we have completed the Equity Audit, what happens next?
Depending on your score and the initiatives you have (or don’t have) in place, we will work with you to draw out the key insights and opportunities from your submission. To support this discussion, you will receive a report that includes:
- A break down of your total score for each of the 10 standards
- A total score out of 100%
- An outline of:
- The primary gaps you may like to focus on
- The key strengths you might choose to leverage
- Opportunities to leverage your endorsement package inclusions based on the above
- Guidance on the approach you take based on best practice knowledge
We will be looking to launch our benchmarking functionality later in the year.