The study, which has been developed utilizing procedures for protecting privacy and confidentiality, will be implemented in two phases. Here is an overview of the timeline for the entire project along with details for the two phases of the study.

In the first phase, the research team will conduct a baseline analysis of workplace social networks based on de-identified email metadata (i.e., who sent a message to whom and when using a data set that will be purged of identifying information such as email addresses, subject lines, message content, and attachments). Below is the specific procedure that will be followed:

• All staff will have an opportunity to have their individual data excluded from this baseline analysis (recognizing that doing so will limit their ability to participate in the study and its associated professional development opportunities).
• The legal and privacy teams will identify additional individuals who are engaged in legal or other sensitive matters and whose data will therefore be excluded from the analysis.
• Berkeley IT will extract metadata of internal communications messages going back six months for all staff. Metadata to include: sender email address, recipient email address, date stamp, time stamp, and message size. Excluded from this pull are legal departments and any other groups that communicate highly sensitive information.
• People & Culture will extract monthly Human Resources Information System (HRIS) records for all staff going back 2 years. Department affiliation to be listed only for departments with 10 or more employees. Excluded from this pull are legal departments and any other groups that communicate highly sensitive information.
• Berkeley IT and People & Culture will separately apply the same hashing algorithm to the metadata and HR data (i.e., hashing email addresses and employee / supervisor IDs). This step is key to de-identifying the data before it is shared with the research team, which will not be able to undo the hash and will therefore not have identifying information about staff.
• Berkeley IT and People & Culture will transfer the data to the research team using a Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), a network protocol for securely accessing, transferring, and managing large files and sensitive data.
• The research team will then merge HR and IT data using hashed email addresses and conduct the baseline analysis.

In the second phase, all participants whose data were included in the baseline analysis will have an opportunity to opt in to the learning and development experience.

• Those who choose to participate will be assigned to a learning circle with a set of peers they do not already know well (based on the research team’s baseline analysis of email metadata).
• Those who opt into the study will then be given access to the four modules of content on the Harvard ManageMentor platform and be asked to engage with one of the modules (which take less than an hour to complete).
• They will then participate in a 90-minute meeting with their learning circle, which will be led by a professional facilitator.
• Finally, at the conclusion of the study, they will get access to findings from the study, including its implications for inclusion and belonging.

From there, researchers will offer an assessment and some potential recommendations for the organization before eventually conducting a post-assessment. If you have questions about this approach, please feel free to reach out to Paul Vicinanza ([email protected]), postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, who is assisting with this study.