Emma Wall: Why should you care about diversity? Well, according to management consultancy firm, McKinsey, companies with better gender and ethnic diversity are more successful. McKinsey found that companies with greater diversity attracted better talent to their workforce, had better customer satisfaction and were able to have better decision-making.
Diversity falls into the S of ESG, the social to the environmental, social and governance concerns and indeed, diversity is a factor in Morningstar's own Sustainability Rating for Funds.
Recent data released by Equileap found that women still only make up 18% of employees at executive level across developed countries. They looked at data from 23 developed economies and found that the best companies for gender diversity were General Motors and L'Oreal. The best UK firm was Diageo. Companies that have achieved pay parity across genders were Air New Zealand and Ashtead Group.
There's still a lot of way to go but it sounds like we are making great inroads.