Navigating Diversity & Inclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed work online and into remote locations, often employees’ homes. At the same time, calls for racial justice intensified and businesses increased their focus on policies of diversity and inclusion (D&I).

Now, with workers returning to the offices, companies are considering whether to implement health protocols such as vaccine and mask mandates.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies matter to employees, customers, investors and community stakeholders. Corporate boards are under a microscope as never before, measured on racial, cultural and gender diversity.

The Refinitiv Insight: Diversity & Inclusion Report looks at these two major issues – the return to work and board diversity – along with the Refinitiv Diversity and Inclusion Index to discover who is making progress in creating diverse and inclusive workplaces and the benefits that result from those workplaces.

Key findings

The report offers actionable information for enterprises seeking to navigate these complex challenges.

Among the key findings:

• While the U.S. has the most companies represented in the Refinitiv D&I Index, Ireland scored the highest on this broad measure.
• In the area of cultural diversity on boards of directors, Europe’s scores are way in front of other world regions, but South Africa is making progress.
• As employees return to the office, the report looks at disclosure and practices concerning employee satisfaction, childcare and flexible hours that may become top of mind for management teams.

Refinitiv’s report takes a global view of the D&I landscape, using Refinitiv ESG data to see which regions are leading the way. The report measures diversity, inclusion, people development and D&I controversies.

In recent years – even pre-pandemic – research showed that companies that prioritized a diverse and inclusive environment and worker satisfaction outperformed both financially and in the equity markets.

Those trends are continuing but are being shaped in new ways.

The current direction of D&I

Refinitiv’s metrics demonstrate that companies with culturally diverse boards outperform for equity investors – by a considerable margin.

The pandemic has revised worker expectations – for both prospective employees and current staff. MarketPsych analysis shows that worker satisfaction is essential to business success, and corporations are now figuring out how they will support that value in the new COVID-influenced world.

For an in-depth look at today’s D&I environment, including results that may be surprising, download the report.

D&I data evolves

In addition, Refinitiv is working towards broadening the social metrics covered in the ESG database to ensure investors can evaluate companies based on racial equity and corporations can report and analyze their progress.

Refinitiv started this initiative by partnering with Fortune to encourage businesses across all industries to address one of today’s most pressing challenges. Refinitiv is continuing the efforts to ensure racial and ethnic diversity metrics are available for all companies in the database.

As the data builds, Refinitiv will look at evolving the D&I ratings that are used to construct the Refinitiv D&I Index – ensuring it represents truly diverse and inclusive companies.