Project Libra: Empowering Inclusion and Diversity for UK economy recovery

Diverse and inclusive companies report higher innovation, productivity and employment engagement leading to increased business productivity. However, COVID-19 has had a drastic impact on workplace D&I strategies and ultimately the UK economy. Mortality rates, socioeconomic factors such as employment have all been affected with minority groups, women, younger individuals and lower paid jobs being the most negatively impacted. A recent [Deloitte study][0] showed that bias and xenophobia has also risen with drastic impact on workplace inclusion.

COVID-19's economic repercussions have led to businesses being unable to prioritise Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) initiatives due to insufficient best practices, ineffective existing strategies with tangible impact and a lack of resources. Deprioritising D&I is not a conscious decision as businesses require actionable insights to better understand the effects of D&I strategies on its workforce and therefore business performance.

Project Libra (PL) aims to support the recovery and growth of the UK economy by determining optimal D&I strategies via its AI-driven, cloud based, SaaS solution. Companies urgently need integrated digital solutions, accessible remotely due to the current climate, in order to optimise D&I strategies. This will help companies and the public overall to better understand its workforces, maximise business productivity, talent engagement and create new opportunities for employment.

PL will further advance technical improvements to its existing, proprietary AI algorithms to deliver a unique technology for business leaders to measure, adapt and monitor their D&I strategy in the most environmental and sustainable manner. Employers can use quantitative ways to visualise the positive impact of different strategies on business performance to optimise their D&I policies.

In this project, D&I data will be collected, organised and analysed to strengthen existing proprietary datasets, indices for national and industry benchmarking. Scenario-based simulations will be provided to visualise optimised potential business outputs, in relation to D&I factors, to support data-driven decision making in real time.

The output will be a commercially-usable prototype, via a novel business-to-business software solution that can be deployed in pilot testings across all sectors, to generate meaningful impact in real life operating conditions.

PL aims to support the UK economy's growth and recovery following the effects of COVID-19 in the most environmental and sustainable manner. PL will use AI-technology to support businesses identifying their optimal D&I strategies, and therefore creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces. The output will ultimately lead to increased business productivity and innovation to counter COVID-19's economical repercussions on the public and country.

[0]: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/About-Deloitte/gx-thrive-tal-start-employee-education-training-in-crisispdf2.pdf