Hey Champs 🏆

Let me take you back to when I first dipped my toes into the world of ERG data and dashboards. Actually, let’s be real—I wasn’t even asked to create a dashboard. The request was simply to “get the data,” which was about as vague as it gets. But being the do-the-most person that I am, I knew after I got the data into one place that I couldn’t just leave the data sitting in a Google Sheet. So, I taught myself how to build a proper ERG dashboard.

It took me about two weeks to finish my first one (side note: now it only takes me about two days… or even two to three focused hours if I’m really in the zone 🌱growth 🌱 . I was super proud of that first dashboard. It had total budget spent, the number of attendees at ERG events, number of members - even broken down by department - something that had neven been visualized at the company for the ERG Program. But when I presented it, the feedback I got was ultimately, “This is cool, but we want to see percentages.”

At the time, my dashboard was full of raw numbers. But the executive I spoke to pointed out that while the numbers were nice, they didn’t tell a story. They wanted to know what the data meant in context—what the potential could be versus what it actually was.

Cue my lightbulb moment. 💡 I realized that I needed to think beyond raw numbers, so I went back to the drawing board. After some research and tinkering, I figured out how to build a 100% stacked chart ( examples that I use now are pictured below) to show the percentage of engaged members versus those who weren’t. This was a game-changer. I give a little context on these charts in my Linkedlin post today.

But the journey didn’t stop there. A year into using this new and improved dashboard, and tracking overall growth in “Program Reach” aka participation of employees with the goal successfully hit to move the percentage of employees participating in the ERG from 28% to over 50% over that year (again, I was proud) another executive asked me, “Is that really what we want to measure? It’s cool that we’ve increase the number, but I want to know if these programs are truly impacting the members.”

Cue another facepalm 🤦🏿‍♀️. I had spent a year measuring the wrong metric. But hey, at least I have the battle stories to share with yall. After a lot of workshopping and feedback, I developed a Member Engagement Score—measuring the percentage of ERG members who are actively engaged in an ERG along with the Channel Engagement Score- measuring the percentage of Communications Channel Members (ex. Slack channels) that have engaged in your ERG Channel over the last 30 days. And, because I love going the extra mile, I even found a way to incorporate goals into the dashboard (example charts pictured below).

Now, when I present data, it’s not just about where we are now. It’s about how far we’ve come, how we measure up against our goals, what percentage of membership we’re impacting, and the strategies we’re using to close the gap.

That, my friends, is how you tell a story with data.

We’ll dive deeper into this in our session this upcoming Tuesday, but today, I just want to remind you: start with the story you want to tell to avoid some of the headaches that I experienced.

Feeling like you’re running on empty? Need some tips? Hit me up. I’m more than happy to share ideas, best practices, or just chat. I’ve got a ton of ideas, and I’m always looking for someone to share them with. Here’s my link for a quick 15-minute call if you’re interested.

Catch you next week.

-The ERG Homegirl ✌

That’s it for this week!🙌🏿

Weeks of consistent newsletters: 12🎊