Watch JUST’s Ashley Marchand Orme Break Down the State of Workforce Diversity Data Disclosure

This week, JUST Director of Corporate Equity Ashley Marchand Orme, joined Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss our latest analysis of workforce diversity data disclosure among the Russell 1000.

There are some encouraging signs from the analysis, which found that as of September 2021 55% of Russell 1000 companies disclose some form of racial and ethnic workforce data, Ashley said. She pointed out that that number is up 23 percentage points from JUST’s last analysis of this data in January 2021, but that there’s room to grow when it comes to how detailed those disclosures are. “Only about 11% of companies actually disclose that more detailed intersectional diversity data that layers on that additional job category similar to what’s in the EEO-1 reports that companies already report to the EEOC,” she said.

Companies with over 100 employees are required to report workforce diversity data to the EEOC, she said, which includes information on gender, race and ethnicity, and job category. “This is the information investors want to see more of,” she said, referring to the rise in calls for companies to disclose their EEO-1 reports from shareholders. “Companies are already collecting it so the lift to provide this information is relatively low. It’s just a matter of companies making this information more public.”

Disclosing this data, Ashley noted, is also a way for companies to signal that they’re following up on diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments made a year and a half ago. “What we’re seeing now is that stakeholders, investors, and others are actually looking at the data to say ‘companies, you made these commitments, are you opening yourself up to the conversation by being transparent about where you stand now?’,” she said.

Watch the full conversation below.