Companies struggling to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion

Organisations are under pressure from customers, employees and investors to address inequalities, remove disparities and combat climate change, yet one in five do not have a plan in place to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), heard participants in a recent webinar by Commercial Risk Europe. Attendees were told that this was one of the major findings of this year’s Mercer Marsh Benefits (MMB) People Reportand survey. The report also shows that DEI has slipped to 17th place out of 25 priority risks among risk manager and HR respondents. Speaking as part of the webinar hosted by MMB and Commercial Risk Europe, Matt Duffy, global commercial leader for MMB International, warned that it would be dangerous for businesses to feel any complacency around DEI. “A couple of highlights from the survey were that 87% of organisations that responded said health and safety was a serious threat to the organisation, yet around 66% of those organisations don’t have an effective governance model in place to manage insurances that are in place to support them and keep their people fit and healthy when at work,” he explained. “Only 20% of the organisations that responded had a plan to advance DEI in their organisation,” he added. Responses to the survey differed between HR and risk professionals. “They mainly agreed on the top risks but then started to diverge. HR are more inclined to worry about AI and implementation of technology, while risk professionals were more likely to prioritise talent attraction and retention,” said Duffy. The survey findings revealed that both risk professionals and HR worry about the growing cost of health and welfare. However, both groups did not mention mental health issues or DEI in their list of concerns. “Given employee and consumer concerns around these issues, there are some really serious implications for the impact of not properly addressing these areas, leading to concern about the resilience of organisations,” said Duffy. Lower-paid workers were most impacted by the pandemic and were given more support than those on higher earnings, said Duffy. “When thinking about healthcare support for 2023, think about spreading the care more equitably and almost flipping the pyramid when considering the support on offer,” he advised. Issiah Sakhabuth, chair of the International Employee Benefits Association, said there has always been a disparity in healthcare provisions. “People might offer cover for white-collar workers but not the blue-collar workers. Covid-19 has highlighted that. But employers have a duty of care and they are more aware of that. It is a slow process but they are taking more care of their staff and looking at welfare from a wider perspective,” she said. Duffy pointed out that 26% of organisations have considerably increased their spend on employee benefits, learning lessons from the pandemic. But he said much of this is still targeted at higher earners. Going forward, money needs to filter down across all the diverse groups of employees, he added. That brought speakers onto the subject of DEI, which appears to be slipping down the corporate agenda. “In 2021, we saw that both risk and HR professionals ranked DEI 15th out of 25; and this year, instead of seeing it rise up the rankings as we expected, it actually slid to 17th,” said Duffy. Sabrina Hartusch, chair of Swiss risk management association Sirm and head of risk at Triumph, said factors such as the war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis have grabbed the attention of many companies. However, ongoing issues such as people risk and DEI should not fall off risk managers’ radar as a result, she stressed. “I can only think it has slid down the scale because of other things. When we open the newspaper, we see talk of inflation, recession, war – they are issues that companies are under pressure to deal with. If they are in survival mode, it could be that DEI slips down the agenda in the short term,” she said. Hartusch is most concerned by the survey finding that 60% of respondents don’t believe their organisation has a good foundation of governance for pensions, benefits and insurance within their company. Martin Drux, multinational leader at Marsh Europe, believes companies need to put focus on attracting and retaining talent through DEI. “If you are a more inclusive company, you really broaden the base of the talent that you can bring into the company. Some people still lack the strategic vision of why this is important beyond ticking the boxes to get a good ESG score. To me, it is mind-boggling that people have not embraced diversity as part of their talent acquisition strategy,” he said. The webinar is available on our In Demand service. You access it by clicking here.

Companies struggling to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion

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