TIDE (Talent Inclusion and Diversity Evaluation) FAQs

Wherever you are on your inclusion journey, TIDE can support you to learn, grow, maintain, and advance your inclusion practices. TIDE is a flexible framework that requires minimal time-consuming evidence gathering and is free for enei members.  

TIDE measures an organisation’s approach and progress on diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) practices across 10 areas:   

In addition, organisations are asked to provide information about their industry, sector, size, and turnover. This is to inform the annual benchmarking process and enable our members who enter a TIDE entry each year to compare their results to other organisations within their sector and industry. 

Some of the most frequently asked questions about TIDE are answered here.

We encourage enei members to complete TIDE at least annually, due to the value it can add to your organisation’s DEI activities and action planning. Members are required to submit a new entry each year to be included in the annual benchmarking process and to receive a benchmarking report with valuable insights into how your organisation is performing in comparison to other organisations in your sector and industry. In addition to the annual submission, many organisations update their entry throughout the year so they can monitor their progress and continuously improve.  

The TIDE reports provide useful insights and measures to support internal reporting for your organisation. If you wish to update your responses during the annual cycle, you will be able to do this from your TIDE dashboard by navigating to your “completed submissions” and selecting ”edit”. If you submit more than once during the annual cycle, only the most recent submission will be included in the annual benchmark. 

It may depend on your organisation and how well you know it. The average time for your first TIDE submission is likely to take approximately two hours. The system saves your answers, so your future submissions can be processed quicker.  

TIDE uses question logic to ensure that you are only asked relevant questions based on how you have answered earlier questions. Therefore, the number of questions varies by section and depends on your responses.  

For example, in the Diversity Data Monitoring section, if you state in response to question one that you “do not collect employee diversity data”, you will then be served question 17. A response is required for all the questions that are presented in each section. 

No, there is no need to complete the questionnaire in one sitting. You can save your responses at any stage – even part way through a section. Wherever you are within a section of the questionnaire, you will find an option towards the bottom of your screen to “Save current progress”. This will save a draft of your answers for you to return to and complete when you are ready. 

No, you can work through the sections in your preferred order. 

If you wish to update your responses to the TIDE questionnaire during the annual cycle, you will be able to do this by navigating to your entry under “completed submissions” on your account dashboard and selecting “edit”. This can be done multiple times while the submission cycle is open. 

If you would like to be part of the annual benchmark, you must submit your completed TIDE entry by 31 May. You are welcome to participate in TIDE at any time during the open submission cycle from around August/September to May. 

Each year, the system is paused while we complete an audit and run the annual benchmark. The date TIDE re-opens for the next cycle may vary. 

Yes, the TIDE software allows you to complete the questionnaire on mobile devices, tablets, laptops, and desktops.  TIDE is self-assessment, which means you must ensure you answer questions accurately. This will mean the results represent your organisation fairly. There will be an audit of 10% of the entries and changes will be made to scores, if necessary, before completing the benchmark and making any awards.

TIDE has been built on a fully accessible and user-friendly platform in line with enei’s Accessibility Statement. The website was built by HeX Productions to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA international standard. 

When you log onto the system before completing the questionnaire, you will be able to review the question set and explanatory notes for each section. It is recommended that you review these prior to responding to the questions.  

This initial review will help you understand the information that is required. It will also help you identify who you may need to consult with in your organisation to help you gather information to support you as you complete each section. If you wish to delegate the completion of a section to a colleague, you will need to securely share your log in details with them. 

While there is some scope to upload evidence to support your answers to the TIDE questionnaire, we rely on and trust members to provide accurate and honest responses.  

Further evidence may be requested if your organisation is selected to be a part of the annual audit that takes place each summer after the submission cycle closes. An indication of the information you may be required to provide or explain, if selected for audit, is included in the explanatory notes for each section of TIDE. 

On completion of the questionnaire, including ‘About Your Organisation” and all 10 sections, you should navigate to the final section of the TIDE questionnaire labelled “submit” and complete your submission. After you complete this submission step, you can navigate back to your account dashboard to view your results by following the link to the TIDE report generated for your organisation. You will be able to view and download this from your dashboard under “completed submissions”.  

Yes, every enei member receives one TIDE account as a benefit. Additional accounts for different locations or divisions can be arranged without charge. If you would like to set up additional TIDE accounts, please email info@enei.org.uk.

Your TIDE report includes your overall TIDE score along with a detailed breakdown of your results in each section, including what level your organisation is at on the TIDE Inclusion Roadmap. You will be presented with your three highest performing sections and lowest performing sections along with links to useful enei resources to support you to address areas where there is room for improvement. In addition, you will be able to see the questions in each section where you have not achieved the maximum score available. This will help you to target your action planning to continuously improve and develop your inclusive workplace culture. 

Your responses are scored by applying a set of rules embedded within the TIDE system. You will receive an overall percentage score along with a breakdown of your percentage score within each section.  

Not every question or section is weighted equally. There are a small number of response options that are non-scoring, and there are also some questions where the score is capped. This is to recognise that there are different ways to enhance workplace DEI, and organisations may take different but equally effective approaches. 

As TIDE is a self-assessment tool, to ensure the integrity of the benchmarking, enei will complete an audit of a random selection (roughly 10%) of entries each year to ensure standards are maintained.  

If your organisation is selected for audit, you will be invited to a discussion call (roughly one hour) with a member of the enei team to review your submission and talk through some of the DEI policies and practices you have implemented. You can complete TIDE at any time of the year, apart from when the system is paused to take the benchmark and complete the audit. If you would like to be part of the benchmark, you should submit TIDE by 31 May. From 1 June, the system is likely to be paused until approximately 31 July each year, although the date TIDE re-opens for the next cycle will vary.

TIDE uses question logic to ensure that you are only asked relevant questions based on how you have answered earlier questions. This means that there is not a single list of TIDE questions that can be numbered. 

As well as the evidence members are asked to upload within the TIDE questionnaire, the explanatory notes (published within each section of TIDE) provide examples of the types of detail you may be asked to share. 

If selected for audit, you may be asked, based on your responses, to provide copies of relevant documentation or to explain the organisation’s approach. 

Following the audit, we will identify the top performers and prepare benchmarking reports (known as TIDEMark reports).  

Each year, submissions for the annual TIDE benchmark close at the end of May. Over the summer, enei carries out an audit of 10% of the entries to ensure the integrity of the benchmarking. When the audit is complete (usually in August), we will run the benchmarking process and issue TIDEMark reports to each organisation that participates. These reports can be accessed from your account dashboard, and you will be notified once these are available. 

You will be benchmarked against all entries within the year of your entry. Additionally, where there are five or more entries from organisations within your sector (public, private, third) or industry, you will receive these additional benchmarks. 

In the event that fewer than five organisations from your selected industry have submitted an entry, an effort will be made to benchmark your organisation against similar organisations. This means that if there are not enough entries in the industry you have chosen (but other organisations in another sector would create a worthwhile benchmark), enei will contact you and ask for your permission to benchmark you within that industry. We will not do this without your permission. 

For the 2025 TIDE cycle, we are pleased to have launched a revised TIDE questionnaire on a new accessible and user-friendly platform.  

For several years, TIDE has been supporting our members to understand and develop their DEI practices to embed and sustain an inclusive workplace culture. DEI practices are always evolving, and we want to ensure that TIDE evolves with them to bring the most value to your organisation and to support your continuing inclusion journeys. 

The latest version of TIDE will consider the current and future state of DEI, looking beyond the Equality Act 2010 and guiding organisations to ensure all employees have the support and tools they need to thrive. 

To find out more about the evolution of TIDE, why it has changed, what’s new, how to access the updated platform, and the importance of downloading your past reports, visit FAQs: Navigating the next generation of TIDE. 

The information contained within this resource was accurate at the time of its publication. This article was created in September 2024.