Australian fintech Financy has partnered with the University of South Australia’s Centre for Workplace Excellence (CWeX) to develop Impacter – a new tech solution that helps organisations manage and prioritise performance on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Financy launched a pilot of Impacter on 28 November and is working with 30 small, medium, and large organisations over the coming months to test the new technology and gather feedback.
Impacter is all about helping organisations with their social impact, providing organisations with tools to measure, act on, and be accountable for, their DEI initiatives, while also supporting the business case for doing so.
It is the next step in Financy’s evolution as a fintech, building on the company’s high-profile delivery of women’s financial content and the quarterly gender equality scorecard and report, the Financy Women’s Index.
Financy CEO, Bianca Hartge-Hazelman, says the partnership with CWeX provides academic guidance and leading insights on DEI across Impacter.
“The Impacter software presents a significant opportunity for corporate Australia to manage, improve and report on their DEI credentials on an ongoing basis, and importantly, understand the business case for their actions,” Hartge-Hazelman says.
“This is a huge step forward for organisations and I’m delighted to have so many organisations, representing over 4000 employees, taking part in the current pilot and sharing their needs and wants with our team.
“Many business leaders, human resources and diversity managers, are spinning their wheels on DEI because they are working with inefficient and compliance-heavy systems that place a huge administrative burden on their workloads. As a result, many leaders struggle to see the value of DEI for company performance.”
Financy’s partnership with UniSA’s CWeX has been critical to the development of robust questions and scoring algorithms for Impacter, which in time will be used to inform national and global insights on best practice towards achieving an equality-effective company.
UniSA Research Professor in Human Resource Management, Professor Carol Kulik, says Financy is the ideal partner for CweX.
“CweX research has identified the management practices associated with greater gender equality, but change doesn’t happen overnight,” Professor Kulik says.
“Companies need a way to track their progress and measure the impact of their DEI activities. Without that accountability, companies can adopt the wrong practices, or give up on the right practices too soon.
“The Impacter tool reflects Financy and CweX’s shared commitment to gender equality – finally, organisations will be able to benchmark their progress toward gender equality and create a practical plan to accelerate change.”
