Board participation is becoming a dominant metric for assessing gender equality, but although certainly significant, attracting and retaining diverse talent in a company’s overall workforce is equally important. It’s therefore crucial for asset managers to dedicate time to analysing and measuring diversity splits across organisations.
It’s well known that diversity and equality enhance corporate performance in many ways: recruiting and retaining the best talent, having stronger customer orientation, enhancing corporate reputation and improving decision-making and innovation outcomes. Gender and social equality create positive impact in terms of financial and social returns that in turn help shape a company’s intrinsic value.
Reporting retention
One of the things that is important to look at is retention rate. In 2020, our analysis found that portfolio companies tracked and disclosed retention rates at nearly twice the benchmark rate (67% versus 36%, respectively), leading to the conclusion that companies that do better at retaining women publicly disclose it.
Read the full comment in ESG Clarity’s March 2022 digital magazine.
