
A DEI diversity, equity and inclusion) audit—also called an EDI audit, inclusion audit or diversity and inclusion audit—is like a check up to monitor the health of your organization and to help guide your future strategies towards creating a healthier and more inclusive organizational culture.
Whether you’re the formal EDI lead in your organization or an employee looking to make change — you need data in order to make effective decisions and ask for the right supports.
A good DEI audit will:
- Identify the pain points and problems in your organization
- Inform next steps to make progress where needed
- Provide a framework to track your progress over time
- Communicate the information above in a clear, accessible and personalized way
You can try our Deep Diversity Solo® Snapshot for free to get a quick, easy and instant EDI assessment on your organization, or keep reading to learn more about other EDI audit options.

Deep Diversity® Solo Snapshot
Want to better understand where your organization stands on the journey toward becoming an inclusion leader? Anima Leadership’s Deep Diversity® Solo Snapshot is a FREE, a seven-question measurement tool that will offer instant insights and recommendations around key factors for EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) success.
“How Inclusive is Your Organization?” And Other Important Questions
A DEI audit is a question-based measurement tool that analyzes your organization’s DEI strengths and weaknesses based on real employee data.
By asking the right questions, you’ll get data that illuminates a clear path forward for your organization’s own equity, diversity and inclusion work.
Employees complete an anonymous survey with questions around key EDI areas → the audit tool compiles and assesses their answers → you get an EDI score for each area (and sometimes overall).
It’s that easy.
What’s hard is mapping out an EDI strategy without knowing what’s going right and what’s going wrong…or where you should begin.
That’s why Anima’s EDI audits also include next steps and actionable best practices to help you plan what to do next, all supported by decades of experience and an ecosystem of consulting, coaching and course opportunities to support your EDI growth.
No Time? No Resources? No Problem.

EDI audits are tools that save time, money and reputations. Increasingly companies are understanding the moral, legal and economic advantages of adopting EDI strategies but don’t always have the resources to hire the EDI experts they need to get these strategies started. An EDI audit can help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want—and need—to go.
Morally, advancing EDI is the right thing to do. At its core, equity is about making the effort to create a culture where all staff are valued, feel valued and know that they belong.
Legally, there may be are federal, state and provincial laws that require you to measure and manage EDI practices within your organization.
Economically, discrimination lawsuits can be costly. But beyond that, organizations are beginning to realize the economic advantages of more inclusive workplaces. Consumers and employees alike are turning to organizations that prioritize equity and diversity over profits.
The cost of ignoring exclusion can be devastating, especially for small or medium-sized organizations. Higher employee turnover, toxic workplace relationships and loss of business all come at a cost.
Don’t make the mistake of downplaying the importance of EDI work because you’re feeling under-resourced. EDI work doesn’t have to be a huge financial undertaking—it can be a small investment that protects you from bigger losses down the line.
Anima Leadership offers aggregated audits starting at just $19.99 USD a person so you can begin this critical work without breaking the bank.

Deep Diversity® Leaders’ Snapshot
Want to consider multiple perspectives to establish and track your organization’s EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) progress? Anima Leadership’s Deep Diversity® Leaders Snapshot is a ten-question measurement tool that will compile responses from your leadership team in an automated report offering insights, progress tracking and recommendations around key EDI factors.
Organizational Change Starts With You
EDI audits can be crucial supports for EDI leads guiding an organization through their unique EDI journey. Every organization is different, so every organization will have different starting points and require different resources along the way.
Our EDI audits can start you off on the right path by assessing your current status around key EDI factors like:
- Leadership and EDI Accountability
- Human Resources
- EDI Policies and Procedures
- EDI Communications and Community
- Organization Climate, Culture & Representation
- Supplier Diversity
- Employee Experience/Psychological Safety
- Data Collection & Representation
- Return on Investment/Business Case
…and more.
Planning and executing and EDI strategy on your own can take years of work—our EDI audits can help you shorten that timeline to as little as six months.
Not ready to invest in a full audit? Free tools like Anima’s Deep Diversity® Solo Snapshot empower individuals who are ready right now to take their knowledge about the organization and transform it into instant insights and recommendations.
Follow the Data for Your DEI Strategy

DEI audits are progress trackers. They provide a benchmark that can be regularly assessed to track your performance over time. When you have data to guide your steps you’ll know exactly where you’re going and how to to get there.
Without data, issues can be seen as individual problems or anecdotal experiences as opposed to system-wide issues. That means organizations risk having “progress” seen as a process of silencing individuals to make the problem “go away”.
This is a costly mistake that leads to reoccurring problems instead of long-term solutions.
Following the data from an EDI audit allows your organization to stay grounded in unbiased data during every step of your EDI journey. This will help you develop a strong understanding of your current performance so you can literally track the impact of your efforts as your systems change and your organization becomes more inclusive.
Now What?
A DEI audit will be one of your greatest assets in your inclusion journey. It creates a safe space for individual employees to anonymously provide invaluable insights about organizational systems, demographics and culture. It helps organizations recognize patterns of inequity that need to be addressed and prioritized. And it empowers leadership to quickly understand how to use this data to improve the overall health of the organization.
Curious about our assessment tools?
Get an DEI audit sample with our free individual Deep Diversity® Solo Snapshot , or explore a wider range of our audit tools for leaders and organizations.

Anima Leadership
Anima Leadership believes in a compassionate approach to racial justice where everyone can feel like they matter and belong.
Since 2007, we have worked with thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations teaching, consulting and coaching transformative change. Our award-winning training programs and innovative measurement tools will help us journey with you from diversity basics to advanced belonging.