Problem: Inaccessible Fortune 500 Diversity Data
Solution: Dashboard Company Diversity Data
Outcomes:
- Helped the client provide a great public service.
- Increased public awareness of the problem.
- Improved the reporting mechanism for public transparency of data.
How We Did It
There are 500 companies on the aptly-named Fortune 500 list, yet only a small portion track and publish workplace diversity statistics. Worse yet, they track their data in different ways. One stat might be labeled the same, but if you read the fine print, it might be tracked differently across companies. Women % in tech might actually be self-identified women who work in anything that uses a computer.
Inconsistency between stats is just the beginning. Although many are better than others with tracking and sharing data, companies are still in the dark ages of .pdf diversity reports shared at yearly intervals. Only some publish their stats on corporate responsibility webpages, but none actually allow easy data exports.
In short, analyzing the state of diversity in business today is a nightmare, even for publicly traded companies.
Working with DJ Krebasch and DEI Score, we aggregated and published a public dashboard with all available Fortune 500 companies’ diversity data. The data came from hundreds of publicly available diversity reports (.pdf and online portals) from Fortune 500 companies, and together Process Zip made never-before-seen dashboards for people to compare Fortune 500 companies on their various diversity stats.
The insights are numerous.
- Not many Fortune 500 companies publish their diversity data
- Hispanic and Black people are 3–4X under-represented in tech and other roles.
- Women are still vastly underrepresented in board positions and tech.
- Disability and LGBTQI+ tracking are rarely published in reports.
Across the board, Fortune 500 companies still have ways to go towards achieving equal representation (compared to their US average population) for many minorities and women. When data is publicly available and comparable across industries are regions, public knowledge and pressure can help incentivize companies to continue to improve in these statistics.
But this is just for Fortune 500 companies. Where the real magic of DEI comes in is for other, smaller, companies that have a desire to improve their companies’ diversity.
The Future of Diversity Tracking
DEI wants companies to commit to diversity by publishing their diversity statistics in a publicly shared database. When companies can see how they compare with similar companies in their region/state, they can begin to benchmark their performance for hiring diverse talent.
To get started tracking and comparing your company’s diversity statistics, you can visit https://deiscore.com/start/ and choose the option that best fits your situation.