Inclusive Employer Score

Methodology

The Equality Group Inclusive Index is created with academic and practitioner-led research and is a comprehensive evaluation tool that analyses fund performance on inclusion, diversity and equity over the past 12 months. It allows funds to benchmark themselves to peer organisations and develop meaningful actions to continually improve on social sustainability performance.

The data is sourced from multiple publicly available information sites, including fund websites, social media channels, published articles and reports. The index covers five core categories: leadership, actions and policies, work-life balance, inclusive team, explicit I&D support. Within these categories there are a total of 22 inclusion and diversity submetrics.There are a total of 45 points available in the Inclusive Index.

Equality Group has applied variable weightings to individual categories to reflect the most impactful data points across the core categories, as informed by the latest academic research.

The Details

Equality Group has assessed over 300 companies in the private equity and venture capital industry for their diversity and inclusivity performance. The Inclusive Employer Score (IES) ranks companies on a scale of 0 to 100%, with 100% being the best. The criteria consist of seven categories: (1) Explicit D&I Support, (2) Inclusive Team, (3) Working Conditions, (4) Actions and Policies and (5) Leadership with a maximum of 6, 6, 7, 7 and 9 points achievable respectively. For these criteria, we have only considered content that is publicly available on the company's website. For the top employers, we have also assessed (6) social media activities, and (7) additional public information with a maximum of 4 and 6 points respectively. A total of 45 points can thus be achieved, which corresponds to a score of 100%.

In detail, the six criteria categories consist of the following requirements:

Explicit D&I Support:
1. Explicit diversity & inclusivity statement on main, company or about us page (1 point)
2. Separate Diversity & Inclusion Page with more detail (2 points)
3. Diversity statement specifically mentions underrepresented demographics (e.g., gender, race, LGBTQ) (3 points)
Inclusive Team
1. Main and / or career pages (not just D&I pages) display gender diversity and at least 2 ethnic groups (e.g., White, Black, East Asian, South Asian) (2 points)
2. Whole leadership/management team is visible on the website (one point for all the team and an additional point for images) (2 points)
3. Whole team / demographic breakdown of whole team by gender and ethnicity is visible / available (transparency and accountability for diversity data i.e. pie charts) (2 points)
Working Conditions
1. Flexible working explicitly supported (2 points)
2. Parental leave explicitly offered (2 points)
3. Parental leave equal for both parents (3 points)
Actions / Policies
1. Organisation has conducted review of pay gap by gender (2 points)
2. Organisation has conducted review of employee experiences by ethnicity (e.g., satisfaction, belonging, fairness) (2 points)
3. Organisation mentions specific strategies to boost diversity in both overall recruitment and leadership (e.g., on careers page) (3 points)
Leadership
1. Women & ethnic minorities are represented proportionally in management / leadership (3 points)
2. Leader(s) is/are explicitly supportive of diversity and inclusion (clear statement by leader on the website / or press release) (3 points)
3. Organisation has signed at least one relevant charter for diversity and inclusion (i.e. women in finance, tech talent charter) (3 points)
Social media activities
1. Explicit diversity & inclusivity statement of support - mentions of I&D in the last 12 months on Twitter (1 point)
2. Representative images across the last 12 months (gender balance, ethnic minorities, disabilities or any other visible diversity on Twitter (1 point)
3. Explicit diversity & inclusivity statement of support - mentions of I&D in the last 12 months on LinkedIn (1 point)
4. Representative images across the last 12 months (gender balance, ethnic minorities, disabilities or any other visible diversity on LinkedIn (1 point)
Additional public information
1. Diversity and Inclusion press statement in the last 12 months (not company website) (3 points)
2. Links to external D&I resources, research or assets that the company has created for sharing with their ecosystem (2 points)
3. Listed as B Corp certified (1 point)

For most subcategories, either the maximum number of points or no points will be awarded. However, in some categories, partial points may also be awarded. For instance, in (1c), (2a), (2c) and (5a), sub-points are awarded for each individual demographic category. For (2b) partial points are also awarded if team members are published on the website but photos are missing. Additionally, while it can be assumed that some companies have conducted a gender pay gap review (4a) due to legal requirements, points are only awarded for this if it has been publicly communicated on the company’s website. Regarding the composition of the workforce (5a), we do not only look at the overall percentage of women, but also expect women to be in leadership positions. In addition, we look at the ethnic heterogeneity for each office location individually and not for the whole global workforce.