In 2019 Data Orchard launched the world’s first online data maturity assessment for the not-for-profit sector. With over 600 validated users from every size, shape, and type of organisation; the tool’s designers can now start to share what the data tells us about the state of the sector’s data maturity. This session will reflect on: the strengths and weaknesses of the sector in relation to the seven key themes: Uses, Data, Analysis, Leadership, Culture, Tools, and Skills; surprises and curiosities in the findings; how the not-for-profit sector compares with the public and private sector; the impact the tool has had for those organisations that have used it so far; and future development plans.

Emh Group is a large social housing and care organisation based in the East Midlands of England with properties also in Yorkshire, the West Midlands and the South West, with 1,100 employees and circa 20,000 homes and commercial properties.  Diversity is one of their core values. In 2019 they agreed an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy to ensure equality, diversity and inclusion becomes part of the DNA of the business. One of their first steps was to understand the existing data they held on equality, diversity and inclusion, assess its quality and come up with a plan to improve it. They asked Data Orchard to help them with this work.

In this session we will share our process and learning from the data analysis project, and a year on, what happened and what’s changed at emh.  Data themes will include: merging internal datasets, exploring the external data landscape, changing culture and language (and categories) for equality and diversity characteristics, pay gap analysis and data literacy.