How about a new way to get investors interested in your company? It appears you can by demonstrating how inclusive you are.
Thomson Reuters has recognised that amongst the factors that potential investors want to look at is the extent to which a diversity and inclusion culture is embedded in the workings of the organisation. Diversity and inclusion have become performance issues for many investors who are financially and strategically savvy because it is now well established that inclusion will optimise performance and innovation
The Thomson Reuters global D & I index ranks the Top 100 companies for diversity and inclusiveness by applying 24 metrics across four key categories: Diversity, Inclusion, People Development and News Controversies. The D & I index is intended to serve not as a measure of how socially conscious an organisation is but rather as a criterion of whether the company is a sound home for financial investment.
“In an increasingly globalized business environment, diversity and inclusion is more critical than ever. Having access to such information to drive responsible decisions is a natural next step in the evolution of financial services.” – Will Jan, Vice President of Outsell
Thus the benefits of diversity and inclusion are now being recognised not only as an internal driver of performance but as an important yardstick which shareholders and potential investors will examine in order to evaluate the prospects of a company.
This has been re-emphasised in the latest report from McKinsey, Delivering through diversity (January, 2018). The report states emphatically:
“Our latest research reinforces the link between diversity and company performance- and suggests how organisations can craft better inclusion strategies for competitive edge. Awareness of the business case for inclusion and diversity is on the rise. While social justice typically is the initial impetus behind these efforts, companies have begun to regard inclusion and diversity as a source of competitive advantage and specifically as a key enabler of growth.”
To attract investors, many organisations across the globe are looking for ways to measure the actual level of inclusivity in an organisation and holding leaders accountable for this. Symmetra’s Inclusive Leadership Index and Team Inclusion Pulse Survey are enabling this by providing granular objective data and insight into the actual level of inclusive leadership capability across senior leadership, building an Inclusion Super factor rating into the balanced scorecard of leaders and benchmarking progress year on year as the organisation works towards closing their inclusive leadership capability gap. This is empowering organisations to project to outsiders an important new metric which is being weighed with all other relevant data by outside investors.