Tracking and assessing workforce-diversity programs shouldn’t be hard work, but it should be a top priority. Because businesses benefit when they employ highly engaged workers with different backgrounds, HR leaders and hiring professionals contribute directly to a company’s success when diversity programs meet their goals.

The opposite also is true: Workforce-development professionals who do not effectively measure the outcomes of their diversity programs are in danger of having the programs — and perhaps their jobs — deemed expendable. Ongoing competitive pressures are driving business leaders to demand that all investments return bottom- or top-line improvement, including workforce diversity programs.