Society in-house members across sizes responding to two benchmarking surveys provided insights on how their companies are planning to adjust or have adjusted their workforce-related DEI policies, programs, and/or practices as well as their board diversity policies, practices, and disclosures in response to the White House executive order focused on DEI (“EO”).
The survey results, which helped inform a virtual roundtable on DEI-related practices and disclosures last month, provide valuable benchmarking information for companies to compare their practices and disclosures against their peers.
Among the key takeaways from the workforce-related survey:
- A plurality of companies represented by respondents (37%) reported planning to adjust or having already adjusted their workforce-related DEI policies, programs, and/or practices in response to the EO. An additional 25% indicated that their companies might make adjustments. In contrast, 30% of companies had not made, and did not plan to make, any changes.
- Of the 25% of companies that reported they might make adjustments, 67% indicated they had reviewed or were planning to review their DEI policies, programs, and/or practices to ensure legal compliance with the EO, though they had not paused any initiatives at the time of completing the survey. Another 20% had not yet decided on any specific course of action.
- Among the 37% of companies that reported planning to adjust or having already adjusted their DEI-related workforce policies, programs, and/or practices, nearly all indicated planning to remove or they had already removed references to the acronym “DEI” or the terms “diversity, equity, and/or inclusion” from external communications, disclosures, materials, and websites.
- Companies that reported planning to eliminate, limit, or change their DEI-related public disclosures, or those that had already done so, overwhelmingly indicated that they intended to make or had made these adjustments in their proxy statements (95%), on their websites (90%), in their Form 10-Ks (90%), in their ESG, sustainability, impact, or similar voluntary reports (90%), and, to a lesser extent, in their annual reports (65%).
Among the key takeaways from the board diversity-related survey:
- Of the 41% of companies represented by respondents whose board diversity policy, at the time of completing the survey, included (or had included prior to the EO) demographic diversity criteria, gender (100%), race (92%), and ethnicity (89%) were the most commonly cited criteria, followed by sexual orientation (42%) and disability (31%).
- A plurality of these companies (40%) reported they had no plans to change their board diversity policy, followed by 34% that were considering changes, and 20% that had made or were planning to make changes. When changes were made, planned, or considered, they all involved the elimination of references to gender (100%), race (100%), and ethnicity (100%).
- Regardless of the existence of a board diversity policy, the vast majority of companies (86%) reported disclosing demographic diversity information about their directors, either in aggregate or on an individual basis. Among those companies, many planned to retain disclosures post-executive order on director gender (42% individually, 42% in aggregate), followed by director race/ethnicity in aggregate (40%) and on an individual basis (36%), where applicable.
Responses tended to vary by company type. Members may access results by company type by emailing Merel Spierings.