News & Insights

Pay equity mattered a lot to the public before the pandemic, and it matters even more now.

With only one-fifth of America’s largest companies disclosing that they conducted a pay equity analysis, it’s clear that this issue must remain in focus for corporate America as we build back from COVID-19.

This week, Emmanuel Faber, one of the world’s foremost proponents of stakeholder capitalism, lost his job as CEO and chairman of Danone. The easy reaction would be to see this as a blow for proponents of the stakeholder cause. That would be a mistake.

We look at why, as PwC’s US chair Tim Ryan put it, now is an ideal time for corporate leaders to disclose EEO-1 Report data to accompany their recent commitments to racial equity.

This week’s chart from the Wall Street Journal explores the recent tidal wave of ESG funds and dives into the average expense ratios of U.S. equity ETFs.

The EEO-1 form has rapidly become the gold standard of disclosure, and the numbers and metrics within it reveal a picture of the state of gender and racial diversity at America’s largest companies

More investors are recognizing that investing can serve a dual purpose – to both reach financial goals and to perpetuate core values by supporting companies doing right by all shareholders.

CEOs are a notoriously optimistic bunch. But even so, their views contrast sharply with those of their workers, who have a decidedly different take on the situation.

Do companies that act ethically out perform their peers that lag behind?

Yesterday, acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee – who at the beginning of the week had said at a conference that voluntary ESG disclosure wasn’t cutting it – announced the creation of a Climate and ESG Task Force in the Enforcement division

Synchrony’s DJ Casto tells us why the financial services company cut 40% of its office space square footage and is embracing a hybrid model of “hubs” and working from home for its 16,500 employees.

Companies that have invested in their workforces have been more successful than those that haven’t for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Walmart has seen both sides of the stakeholder vs shareholder debate over the last seven days, losing $25 billion off its market cap after a mixed earnings call.

We are celebrating the achievements of some of the most important Black women leaders in business, including Rosalind Brewer and Thasunda Duckett, who will be the only two Black women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

This week, we look at Morningstar’s most recent analysis Jackie Cook, diving into the C-suite Gender Pay Gap.

MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton explains why assessing your workforce’s financial wellness is a powerful first step toward building long-term value and resilience.

Of all the changes that COVID-19 has brought, the rapid increase in work from home (WFH) policies have been among the most significant for businesses today. How will this continue to change the modern workplace? We partner with AARP to take a look.

We partnered with AARP to explore the need for a broader dependent care infrastructure for U.S. workers to build community, increase employee engagement, and better engage stakeholders more broadly.

In a collaboration with AARP, we take a look at how workers’ paid sick leave policies have changed in response to COVID-19, and what actions business leaders can take to help moving forward. 

At the start of the pandemic, Microsoft committed to continue paying its contractor workers – and reaped the benefits. Here’s why companies to need make sure they’re not overlooking this section of their workforce.

With the societal and legal move towards decarbonization, utilities that emit a comparatively high amount of carbon are challenged by stranded assets and/or potentially high costs to upgrade equipment.

Our annual survey found that liberal and conservative Americans align on policies that prioritize workers and unify Americans from different ideological backgrounds. 

If we’re looking at what Americans want, and what our biggest corporations can provide them, the bar has to be set higher.

Companies that don’t pay their workers well need to take up more debt (i.e. more risk) to have the same returns on equity as those that pay their workers well.

Advocates have asked companies to release their diversity data – but there is currently very little guidance on what to disclose, resulting in inconsistent reporting across corporate America.