In today’s corporate world, sustainability and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are not just buzzwords; they are must for attracting and retaining talent. At Windō, we pride ourselves on maintaining sustainability profiles for 500+ companies across the UK, US, France and Germany. This positions us uniquely in understanding DEI Reporting Trends.
We see a clear multi-year trend of companies being more transparent in sustainability reporting. But 2023 was a difficult year with opposing forces for sustainability and DEI.
We saw the release of the FCA CP23/20 Consultation Paper in the UK which is driving towards greater transparency in DEI reporting. And the EU is also introducing new regulations pushing for greater transparency. Conversely, we saw the United States Supreme Court ruling against race-based admissions policies followed up swiftly by a letter from Attorneys General of 13 States to Fortune 100 CEO’s warning them that by setting race-related workforce targets they are breaking the law. Despite the backlash against ESG and DEI, at Windō we fully expect that transparency in DEI will persist in its upward trend, but companies will publicly tout it less.
Beyond Gender and Ethnic Minority/Race reporting (which is done by most organisations on Windō) here are several key trends from 2023 that we expect to gain further momentum in 2024.
DEI Reporting Trends and Predictions for 2024…
Socio-Economic Reporting
A growing number of companies are making commitments to drive social mobility within their organisations, with over 800 companies signing the Social Mobility Pledge since 2018. The pledge is now looking beyond just recruitment to career progression which might suggest that in the coming years we’ll start to see companies reporting on the % of their Senior Leaders (and even Board Members) that come from a Lower Socio-Economic background.
That might be an ambitious prediction for 2024 (although we have a couple of companies in mind that might surprise us) so let’s stick with what’s more likely; Socio-Economic Workforce Representation and Pay Gap Reporting will continue to increase.
Of the 10 companies on Windō that reported their Socio-Economic Workforce Representation, 6 also reported their Socio-Economic Pay Gap Data, a 100% growth from the previous year. Should this trend continue, in 2024 we will see a total of 12 companies sharing their Pay Gap Data for this group.
Here you will find the 6 Pioneers that are Reporting their Socio-Economic Pay Gap with the front-runners being Latham & Watkins and KPMG.
Disability Reporting
Paul Polman, Former CEO of Unilever and the Chair of The Valuable 500 said that “Ensuring business-led inclusivity of disabled consumers and employees alike is no longer an invitation…Without standardized, publicly disclosed data, it is nearly impossible to create meaningful change, as there is no benchmark to measure against. Business leaders have the power to rectify this glaring inequality themselves—and they must take on the responsibility with urgency.”
What’s reassuring is that over the last 5 years the number of companies that have started to publicly disclose disability representation data has increased by over 1,000%, with an increasing number of companies in the CAC40 and DAX40 following the lead.
Here we show the number of companies on Windō that have been reporting on their Disability Workforce Representation, Senior Leadership Representation and Disability Pay Gap, alongside our predicted number for this year’s reports.
One company however that has pioneered in the space for being amongst the first to publicly report both their Disability Representation and Pay Gap Data is Channel 4 – check out their full DEI profile here.
LGBTQ+ Reporting
A study by Bain & Company of 4,000 US consumers published in June 2023 found that 30% of Generation Z would reject a brand because of the company’s inability to share its DEI track record.
With over 20% of Gen Z Americans identifying as LGBTQ+ it’s no surprise that over the last few years we’ve seen a growing number of organisations reporting on their workforce representation (overall and in some instances at Senior Leadership and Board Level) and their Sexual Orientation Pay Gap.
Clifford Chance, Meta and KPMG are amongst the pioneers for LGBTQ+ reporting, with each one reporting on their LGBTQ+ representation since 2017.
Here you will find the 12 Companies on Windō that publicly disclose their Sexual Orientation Pay Gap.
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