The Opaque Mistake
Recently, for the ‘Why Care?’ Season 2 finale, I spoke to Shawna Ferguson the Senior Managing Director & Director of Global DEI at Wellington Management. Over the course of our conversation, Shawna and Wellington’s commitment to transparent leadership became very clear. Wellington published their 2021 ‘Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ report this month, sharing their internal diversity data, that demonstrates how enshrined transparency and accountability are in their organisational culture.
Many organisations however still believe that internal statistics are to be kept as closely guarded secrets, never to be seen by anyone outside of their upper tiers of management. However, I hope to convince you that this level of opaque, is a mistake.
What does transparency actually mean?
Transparency is a term that’s thrown around a lot in business, but ironically it often isn’t clear what is exactly meant by it. Transparency is most often used to discuss how freely information is shared around organisations, or with the public. The highest levels of transparency often include sharing the information with the public in the form of published reports, as Wellington have done with their 2021 diversity data.
Transparency can take many forms, and most are dependent on what sort of organisation you are. Companies that sell products are expected to be transparent with their supply chains: where their raw materials or ingredients are sourced from, and where they are manufactured into the product. Whilst charities or government organisations that use public funding are expected to be transparent with what and where their donations or public money are spent on.
It may not be appropriate to share all your organisation’s data, particularly if you work with sensitive data, so it is best to research what the public and your employees would like greater transparency on, and how appropriate this is under guidance like GDPR.
Why are Companies Sharing Diversity Data?
An increasing number of companies are being transparent with their diversity data and how effective their current inclusion policies and initiatives are. This is due to government mandatory policies such as gender pay gap reporting as well as greater conversations we are now seeing across society regarding inclusion. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, many organisations made high profile commitments towards greater racial equality, and often this included being more transparent with the diversity characteristics and proportions of their workforce.
This move has helped build trust between marginalised communities and organisations, although this trust is short-lived if organisations then don’t make progress to achieving greater parity. However, the continued reporting of data promotes accountability and if organisations don’t uphold their commitments, they can face public scrutiny.
So, What are the Benefits?
Opening up your organisation to potential public scrutiny may not exactly sound like something particularly desirable, but the benefits of transparency far outweigh the pressures of some extra accountability. Nowadays, the general public expect organisations to hold similar socially-conscious values to those they hold themselves, and when the organisations are being seen to act on these values, loyalty is created. Trust is a valuable commodity in business and, by creating trust, your organisation will inevitably gain market share.
Trust doesn’t just attract consumers however, it attracts employees as well. Put yourself in the shoes of a young black woman. She works in a very white-dominated industry, but is herself an exceptional candidate with an impressive resume. She’s in high demand and has her pick of multiple organisations in her sector. Who do you think she’d decide to join, the organisations that are completely opaque about their diversity proportions, or the organisation that has published their diversity data and admitted there is a racial diversity problem they are committed to address? This transparency and accountability means she will likely find that organisation far more supportive, so she chooses to work there.
Avenir Takes a Data-Driven Approach to DEI
It can be tricky to decide what data your organisation should be transparent with, and you may want to publish data on your employee diversity and inclusion policy effectiveness but simply just have never captured that data. Avenir is here to help with this though. Advising on diversity, equity and inclusion is what we do and we can offer a premium service to analyse your DEI culture that will capture the complex characteristics of the employees in your organisation, and create reports for both internal and external use as needed. To find out more about our services visit the Avenir website here.
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