Honordex

Honordex is a living, interactive platform, allowing users to:

1. Obtain clear scores for all the companies/organisations evaluated
2. View specific areas of EDI strength and weakness
3. Easily compare companies to each other
4. Easily track a company’s / organisation's performance across time.

This innovation came from a decade of consulting with the investment management industry to understand where funds were struggling with EDI. A 2021 report, conducted by the British Venture Capital Association and Level 20, found that across 186 PE and VC firms based in the UK and Europe only 20% of their investment team professionals were women. One in eight firms (12%) had no women at all in their investment teams. Black people were also hugely underrepresented across the sector, with just 3% identifying as Black. This is problematic as research has shown that more diverse investment teams invest in more diverse founding teams, generate better returns for investors, create more innovation, and foster better workplace culture and retention.
 
Moving beyond good intentions toward genuine improvements in EDI requires transparency and accountability. This is what Honordex provides: reliable data on EDI, expertly analysed, and clearly presented. After two years of measurement and publication, it is a leading industry EDI benchmark with annual awards for the leading performers. Since its introduction, we have seen a 4.8% improvement across 42 EDI categories measured between 2021 and 2022. We have also seen EDI scores across the top 10 funds rise by 9.4%. 

The Honordex impact reflects Peter Drucker’s famous insight: “what gets measured gets improved”.

Honordex follows strict GDPR-compliant rules about only feeding through data already in the public domain. The information is taken from publicly available data sources such as the company's website, annual and ESG reports, social media, news and media articles, images and videos. 

Through our scoring methodology, Honordex will assess your company’s data and award a score. The platform allows you to visualise the current score, with detailed breakdowns, benchmarked against relevant industry and peer examples, with recommendations and actions to improve your score.

Honordex is a cloud-based software that companies can access through any web browser.

Your company must be categorised in one of the sectors that we currently cover. See below for more information on the sectors covered by Honordex. Other than that, there are no other qualifying criteria. The initial list of PE and VC funds was sourced from BVCA and Prequin. Additional firms get registered each year to join the Honordex Inclusive Index. 

If your company is not currently part of the index you can register for it to be included via this link.

Currently, there are 43 metrics measured in Honordex, although this is increasing on an annual basis as the methodology and data set evolves and expands. Honordex is always contextualised for the regional and industry-relevant factors relating to EDI. For example, there are core principles that run throughout the methodology that will never change, such as the importance of a diverse leadership team. However, different regions and industries will require specific benchmarks to assess representative diversity of leadership. Honordex adapts to these factors and ensures that companies are able to accurately assess themselves against the most relevant data and peer set.

The list of names is sourced from Prequin and BVCA data, with additional firms registering each year to join the Honordex Inclusive Index. 

Honordex scores the Private Equity and Venture Capital industries. In mid-2023, it will be scoring companies within the credit fund, multi-strategy and professional services and Higher Education industries.

Honordex can provide real-time data reflecting what is communicated in the public domain. Industry rescoring is done on an annual basis, this means that the score will reflect only the available information at the moment of rescoring. If companies have additional information that would be helpful to include, then we encourage them to make this publicly available ahead of rescoring deadlines each year. 

2023 - 2024 rescoring deadlines:

Investment Management: before 31 January
Professional Services: before 30 May
Higher Education: before 30 September

In the future, we want to drive global EDI impact across multiple sectors and partner with the leaders to inspire others to follow. 

We know that there is EDI progress to be made in every industry and in every country. 

Younger employees in Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) have a greater interest in human rights, race and ethnicity issues, LGBTQ+ equality, and feminism than any of their predecessors. This generation is also more ethnically diverse than other generations. Almost half of all Gen Z people belong to a minority group and it’s only natural that they want to see that diversity reflected in the institutions they attend, the employers they work for and the brands they support. 

Honordex allows us the insight to measure and monitor companies across sectors according to their EDI maturity. Greater levels of transparency and accountability are desperately needed in the EDI space. There is currently far too much diversity washing and not enough meaningful action -  this is what we care about. With Honordex companies will be able to see their score and make decisions accordingly to improve their EDI performance.