2022 Workplace Equity Communications Lookbook
We've identified several trends in how leading companies are being transparent about their workplace equity efforts, data, and outcomes. Explore the lookbook below.
Being transparent about workplace equity is a competitive advantage.
To get workplace equity right, companies must ensure they're hiring, compensating, supporting, and advancing employees based on what they have to offer — not their gender, race, or other factors. In an era where investors, boards, employees, job seekers, consumers, regulators, and legislators are increasingly demanding proof of progress around equitable pay, equal access to opportunities, and diverse representation, effective communications can make or break your brand.
Companies should seek to own their workplace equity narrative by proactively sharing progress — even when that requires being honest about challenges — rather than waiting to be asked by stakeholders, or worse, having their workplace equity story told for them through employee complaints, poor online employer reviews, or low scores on third-party ratings. Leading brands are delivering on the call for transparency by providing accessible and visually compelling workplace equity communications that transform equity topics from a potential liability into a brand advantage.
But what does effective workplace equity communication look like? What suits your brand and your journey?
To inspire your own workplace equity communications, we curated a range of publicly available examples from 20+ companies — from blog posts, videos, infographics, and press releases to in-depth DE&I and ESG reports and web pages. How reporting looks varies across organizations, but these leading brands are setting themselves apart by sharing their goals, metrics, and progress with clear, creative visuals and messaging.
As these examples show, workplace equity communication is so much more than a dry compliance exercise. When done well, it embodies your brand, creating another connection point with the audiences that matter most to you.
Disclaimer: This lookbook was built using publicly available workplace equity communications. Inclusion in the lookbook does not imply any relationship between Syndio and these companies.
Click any section below to navigate through the lookbook.
01
Showing progress over time
02
Being creative — but clear — with data visualizations
03
Going deep into multiple facets of workplace equity
04
Using multiple formats for different audiences
05
Reflecting your brand personality in your workplace
06
Earning external validation
Ready to put your workplace equity communication plans into action?
The examples showcased above demonstrate how proactive transparency around workplace equity can become a brand advantage in a world where this information influences brand reputation, investment analyses, career decisions, and consumer purchasing choices. Being transparent about your workplace equity goals, efforts, and achievements allows you to shape the overall narrative of progress at your company — what you're doing to get from where you are today to where you want to be.
And, as you can see, there's no one "right" way to communicate about workplace equity. As long as you're aligning your communications strategy with your company objectives and people goals, you'll be doing it right.
Now it's your turn to put transparency into action. Check out our Workplace Equity Communications Playbook for guidance on the nuts and bolts of how to develop your own communications strategy, step by step.
Ready to get started?
2022 Workplace Equity Communications Lookbook
01Showing progress over time
One of the top ways that companies are communicating about workplace equity is by illustrating progress over time, year over year, through charts, graphs, and data-backed narratives. Workplace equity is a journey of progress, not instant perfection. Most companies have to create an action plan to get to where they want to be from where they currently are. However, by communicating honestly along the way and being open about goals that have been achieved — and areas where there is still room for improvement — you can demonstrate your company's commitment to actionable, ongoing progress and transparency.
While we continue to make strides that create meaningful change for our people, we know we still have a lot to do. We are committed to ongoing actions to increase diverse representation at senior levels to help us to close our pay gaps."
Jackie Henry
UK Managing Partner People & Purpose
Deloitte UK
Employee size: 20,000+ (in UK)
Industry: Professional Services
What stands out: Clear comparison visuals and a written narrative explaining the changes in gender, ethnicity, and Black pay gaps from 2020 to 2021
Deloitte UK's Pay Report 2021 has a useful "at-a-glance" infographic that shows changes from 2020 to 2021 for their mean and median pay gaps that go beyond the required UK gender pay gap reporting to include pay gap data across ethnicity and Black employees. Their snapshot page clearly illustrates year-over-year percentage increases or decreases with green up arrows and red down arrows. Deloitte UK's blog article "Reducing our pay gaps, increasing our transparency" provides a written narrative around their headline pay gap figures compared to the previous year's figures. They also share promotion percentage increases from the previous year for these underrepresented groups.
Other highlights: Deloitte UK also voluntarily discloses their CEO-to-employee pay ratio, despite not being covered by pay ratio regulations. Their report provides thorough coverage of their median and mean pay gap, bonus gap, and earnings gap for gender, ethnicity, and Black employees, as well as quartile earnings for each group. They also clearly address the under-representation driving their pay gaps and provide action plans to create more equal opportunities in hiring, rewards, and career development for each category.
Building towards inclusion: Pay report 2021
Building towards inclusion: Pay report 2021
At a glance - Deloitte UK
Data as at 5 April 2021 - a whole firm view including both our employees and their partners
Addressing the gap
In recognition that both their gender and ethnicity pay gaps are driven by us having lower female and ethnic minority representation at senior grades, they are working hard to address this imbalance by supporting the development and progression of women and ethnic minority colleagues, continuing to deliver against their Black Action Plan, and working with their diversity networks to champion allyship and advocacy.
Jackie Henry, UK Managing Partner People & Purpose at Deloitte, said:
This year, 30% of those promoted to partner were women, an increase of 3% on 2020. We've also seen the number of ethnic minority partner promotions increase from 13% in 2020 to 14% in 2021."
While we continue to make strides that create meaningful change for our people, we know we still have a lot to do. We are committed to ongoing actions to increase diverse representation at senior levels to help us to close our pay gaps."
Headline gender pay figures for Deloitte UK
These tables show our overall median and mean gender pay and bonus gap based on hourly rates of pay as at the snapshot date of 5 April 2021, and bonuses paid in the year to 5 April 2021.4
What stands out: Mix of line graphs and call-out percentages illustrating 1- and 3-year growth rates.
Qualtrics' Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 2021 Report uses line graphs to demonstrate 3-year growth rates for global, leadership, technical role, and sales role representation across both gender and ethnicity. They also use bold percentage illustrations to call out overall representation figures for those groups, as well as growth rates.
Other highlights: Qualtrics' report shares that they use an independent third party to review their gender pay equity — and that in their most recent review, they achieved a global gender pay equity ratio between men and women of 1:1. They also share the outcome of their promotion rate analysis.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 2021 Report
URM leadership (L5+) at Qualtrics
Our global representation of women
Although we are reducing the gap, we have more to do to create more gender representation parity in our organization.
N.B. Representation of women is calculated as women as a percentage of our total workforce population.
Equity
We use an independent third party to review our gender pay equity. In our most recent review, we have global gender pay equity and our global pay equity ratio between men and women is 1:1.
How do we define pay equity?
Compares what women are paid versus their similarly situated male coworkers, "controlling for" or "statistically adjusting" for factors such as job, seniority, and geography. Often referred to as "equal pay for equal work."
Promotion rates
We continuously assessed our annual promotion rates for women and URMs and found no statistical difference in the promotion rates across the groups.
Learning and development
We will invest in learning, Growth and Development, Internal mobility, Coaching, Sponsorship with a lens on diversity-measuring the learning and development gap.
Equal pay is a global imperative. We must tighten the gap to the point where it's no longer a topic of conversation."
Gina Shielbey
Chief Communications Officer
Qualitics
What stands out: Bar graphs show leadership representation and hiring trends for the past four years for BIPOC and women employees
Sellen Construction is one of the smallest companies in this lookbook — proving you don't have to be a huge enterprise to systematically address inequities at your company and deliver top-quality workplace equity communications. In their 2021 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Year in Review report, Sellen uses bar chart comparisons to provide a snapshot of representation trends for both leadership and hiring by gender and race, over the past four years.
Other highlights: Sellen shares that they've achieved pay parity for gender and race (i.e. equal pay for similar work), and that they've obtained third-party certification from Fair Pay Workplace, further setting themselves apart as leaders in workplace equity.They also use pie charts to show quartile earnings by race and gender and explain the drivers of their opportunity gap, as well as actions they are taking to close that gap.
2021 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Year in Review
Leadership representation at Sellen
Annual Trend
Opportunity gap at Sellen
Sellen is a Fair Pay certified employer, and we are proud of the pay equity we have achieved within our company. We have achieved pay parity for gender and race within similar positions, and we recognize that significant work remains in the years to come.
The "opportunity gap" refers to the need to increase the representation of women and BIPOC employees in higher paying roles. When we achieve greater diversity in our higher paying jobs, we begin to close the opportunity gap. At Sellen, closing this opportunity gap will be done through recruiting efforts and leadership development.
02Being creative — but clear — with data visualizations
Top brands are getting creative with how they illustrate their workplace equity data to make information easy to understand and consume. Simple, clear graphics can tell a more compelling, understandable-at-a-glance story than blocks of text. Try mixing up chart and graph styles, or highlight key data points with an infographic. Some companies on this list have even created interactive formats that let users explore and dig into data in a more engaging way. However, it's critical to balance creative data visualization with clarity — graphics should always serve the data and provide an accurate picture of where your company stands.
We understand the power of data and analytical rigor... we are committed to sharing [representation and pay data] publicly to illuminate where we've made progress, where we've fallen short and why and where we need to focus our efforts moving forward."
StitchFix
Employee size: 43,000+
Industry: Tech
What stands out: Beautiful and varied charts illustrating in-depth workplace equity metrics
In their DEI Annual Report 2021, Micron showcases a range of chart types to deliver workplace equity information. These charts break down data across a range of employee demographics, including gender, ethnicity, veteran status, and disabilities. Micron's report clearly maps goals such as 'increasing representation of underrepresented groups' to actionable drivers such as talent retention and inclusive hiring, sharing data for both outcomes. A "key wins" call-out section shares at-a-glance data highlights. Several in-depth bar charts and pie charts compare three years of results for various representation data.
Other highlights: Micron shares that they achieved global pay equity for all underrepresented groups and closed pay gaps in all aspects of compensation, including base pay, cash bonuses, and stock rewards. Micron has been disclosing key data in their DE&I report for four years, but raised the bar on transparency this year by also publicly disclosing their EEO-1 Component 1 diversity data and Component 2 pay data. To improve accountability, they name specific executives as owners of each DE&I commitment and share that they tied team member and executive incentive plan goals to their DE&I targets. An additional — and outstanding — piece of workplace equity communications content is their Pay Equity at Micron video that provides an easy-to-understand explanation of Micron's pay equity process.
For All: DEI Annual Report 2021
Pay Equity at Micron
Increased representation of women
In addition to the progress we made increasing board diversity, we increased representation of women in all job groups. Our aim is to see even more women thrive at Micron and in our industry, and we're working to make that happen with extensive outreach, inclusive hiring, global pay equity, advancement programs and more
Employee size: 6,000+ (in UK)
Industry: Energy
What stands out: Interactive charting tool provides an engaging format to explore gender and ethnicity data for representation percentages, pay gaps, and bonus gaps
While gender pay gap reporting is required in the UK, Shell in the UK shows that compliance can be so much more than just a dry pdf filled with tables by breaking their findings out into other digestible content formats. They voluntarily disclose ethnicity pay gap data as well. Their interactive Diversity Pay Gap charting tool allows users to toggle between mean and median pay gap and bonus gap data for gender and ethnicity, with the ability to explore annual data for the previous four years.
Other highlights: In addition to the interactive charting tool and link to their full 2021 Diversity Pay Gap Report, Shell in the UK's Diversity Pay Gap webpage shares case studies that provide narratives around specific actions being taken to improve representation and inclusivity. It also links to two videos that explain how Shell is closing the gender gap and how Shell is closing the ethnicity gap.
Diversity Pay Gap Report and interactive charting tool
How Shell is closing the gender gap
How Shell is closing the ethnicity gap
Employee size: 26,000+
Industry: Tech
What stands out: Variety of chart types "slicing and dicing" a wide range of workplace equity data across both gender and ethnicity, and demonstrating both pay and opportunity equity
With a webpage dedicated specifically to parity data, Adobe clearly presents their achievements for both gender (global) and ethnicity (U.S.) pay parity and opportunity parity, providing a holistic view of workplace equity at the company. Their Diversity & Inclusion Year in Review 2021 report uses a variety of chart types to illustrate everything from 5-year representation growth data to deep dives into year-over-year representation across individual contributors, people managers, leadership, and technical roles. They also break down intersectional representation with two different views (race/ethnicity by gender, and gender by race/ethnicity).
Other highlights: Adobe's DE&I report shares specifics on how Adobe is driving diverse representation through building a diverse talent pipeline, fair hiring processes, and inclusive talent development. An added communications bonus, Adobe's diversity webpage has a compelling video showcasing employee voices and stories.
Diversity & Inclusion Year in Review 2021
Adobe for All
Parity & Data: Demonstrating fairness
Our Journey to pay and opportunity equity
Our progress
Pay parity
We have achieved global gender pay parity and parity among U.S. underrepresented minority (URM*) employees and non-URM employees. We continue to monitor our progress to ensure that we are creating a culture that fairly rewards and recognizes the contributions of all employees.
Opportunity parity
In February 2019, we coined the term "opportunity parity" to mean fairness in promotions and horizontal movement across demographic groups. Our FY2020 global gender and U.S. URM*/non-URM promotion rates are reflected below. Learn more and review additional opportunity parity data.
US race/ethnicity by gender FY2021
US race and ethnicity at Adobe
At the end of FY2021, URM employees comprised 10.9% of our US employee base. From the end of FY2017 to the end of FY2021, the total population of US employees self-identifying as URM increased from 746 to 1,461-a 95.8% increase.
03Going deep into multiple facets of workplace equity
Leading companies are going much deeper in their analytics and disclosure than the bare minimum of reporting on gender and/or ethnic diversity. While any steps towards transparency are positive, the deeper you go, the more valuable your communications will be to employees, job seekers, and investors. To cover the full range of workplace equity metrics, organizations should share pay equity data and opportunity equity data — which includes breakdowns on hiring, promotions, and leadership diversity.
All workplace equity metrics should cover gender and race in the U.S. and gender globally at a minimum, with a strategy to consider and expand your reporting to include other demographics such as age, veteran status, LGBTQ+ identity, care-giver status, and disabilities, depending on the makeup of your employee population. Lastly, many top companies include a description of their pay equity policies, analysis practices, and remediation processes.
Only through comprehensive, quantitative reporting will corporations be accountable to investors and employees alike and create a benchmark through which to fully manage pay equity."
Michael Passoff
CEO
Proxy Impact
Employee size: 6,000+
Industry: Utilities
What stands out: Clear, varied data visualizations for more than just gender and ethnicity, including disability, military/veteran status, military spouse status, LGBTQ+ identity, generation, and tenure.
American Water's 2021 Inclusion, Diversity & Equity Report provides diversity data for a comprehensive range of employee demographics, going much deeper than most other companies' communications. In addition to gender and ethnicity, they also report on data for disability, military/veteran status, military spouse status, LGBTQ+ identity, generation, and tenure. Their report also covers opportunity equity-related data such as leadership and executive representation, transfer/promotions, new hires/rehires, and requisitions with diverse candidate pools.
Other highlights: In addition to voluntarily disclosing their EEO-1 employment data, American Water also shares that they audit pay gaps and pay equity annually. Their report covers highlights of the company's actions to close pay gaps by improving their programs to attract, reward, retain, and develop a diverse employee population.
2021 Inclusion, Diversity & Equity Report
A look at our diversity
Below is a closer look at the percentage of diverse transfers, promotions, and new hires by category who have voluntarily self-identified.
Diversity metrics: Women
Female employees by ethnicity, race, and career level
A diverse workforce from different perspectives
Diversity of our workforce is important as we evaluate generations and tenure.
By tenure
Employee size: 25,000+
Industry: Professional Services
What stands out: Thorough charts sharing 3-year overall and new hire representation for a range of employee demographics.
BCG's Diversity Equity Inclusion US 2022 Report manages to pack a lot of information into data visualizations that convey their overall and new hire representation. Their report goes deeper than just reporting on gender and ethnicity to include veteran status, LGBTQ+ identity, and disability with comprehensive charts that stack results from the past three years.
Other highlights: BCG's report a shares growth rate increases for new hires and includes charts that show intersectional representation. The report also provides a narrative around ways that BCG is working to retain and advance underrepresented groups by promoting equitable practices in onboarding, performance management, and talent development.
2021 Inclusion, Diversity & Equity Report
Our intersectional representation
Our new hires
Our intersectional representation
We studied representation and hiring data in three categories, analyzing our workforce across: Core Consulting Team (CT), Business Services Team (BST), and additional organizations and specialty business units (SBUs).
Our intersectional representation
We celebrate the progress we are making in increasing our firm's diversity, and we know that hiring is a key component of that. We are committed to continuing to hire diverse students and professionals to accelerate these gains.
Employee size: 63,000+
Industry: Finance
What stands out: A detailed, data-backed narrative around both pay equity and opportunity equity (i.e. the raw median pay gap)
American Express achieved 100% pay equity across gender globally and across race/ethnicity in the U.S. in 2020 — and has maintained this goal since. In their 2020-2021 Environmental, Social, and Governance Report American Express shares details of their pay equity analysis processes, and discloses their raw median pay gap for women globally and for diverse employees in the U.S. In addition to a table showing their 2020 hiring, promotion, and retention rates, the report also provides a narrative around the processes in place to improve the inclusivity of American Express' hiring, interview, and professional development practices.
Other highlights: With clean graphics, clear charts and tables, custom illustrations, and quotes throughout, this report serves as an example of how to build a strong workplace equity narrative within your ESG disclosures. It includes charts and tables showing demographics and representation for their global workforce, U.S. workforce, board of directors, and executive committee by race and gender. The report also voluntarily discloses a summary table of their 2020 EEO-1 data.
The Powerful Backing of American Express: 2020-2021 Environmental, Social, and Governance Report
Board of directors demographics
2020 Senior vice presidents and above
2020 Global gender diversity
2020 Hiring, promotions, and retention rates
Maintaining pay equity
In 2020, we achieved 100% pay equity for colleagues across genders globally and across races and ethnicities in the United States. We are committed to maintaining this goal going forward.
At American Express, we strive to treat everyone who works for us fairly and equally. We have a longstanding commitment to pay all colleagues equitably and maintain bias-free, transparent compensation practices, and we are proud of our leadership in this area.
Our compensation practices reward colleagues based on performance and other business-related criteria for all roles and levels, and we have policies and processes in place to compensate all colleagues fairly and free of biases. We review these practices regularly, and since 2017 we have also worked each year with independent experts to conduct a pay equity review. Since 2019, this analysis has covered our entire global colleague base across genders globally and across races and ethnicities in the US, assessing pay on a statistical basis and considering key factors that influence compensation, including but not limited to tenure, role, level, geography, and performance.
In the past, we aimed to achieve pay "parity"-meaning to the point of statistical insignificance-to ensure colleagues are paid fairly, relative to one another. In 2019, we reached that goal, making salary adjustments in targeted areas where needed. Although pay parity is a meaningful achievement, we wanted to set an even higher standard for ourselves: to reach 100% pay "equity"-meaning no statistical differences-for all genders globally, as well as for colleagues of all races and ethnicities in the US. In 2020, we invested in all necessary and appropriate salary adjustments to reach our goal of 100% pay equity. We are proud of this achievement and are committed to maintaining this goal going forward.
In addition, we are also enhancing transparency by sharing the "raw median pay gap" for women globally as well as for diverse colleagues in the US. This metric compares differences in raw median base pay making no adjustments for factors such as role, level, tenure, performance, or geography. In 2020, the median pay for women globally at American Express was 107.6% of the median pay for men, and the median pay for US racially/ethnically diverse colleagues was 94.6% of that for white colleagues.
We believe our pay equity review provides a more accurate and comprehensive picture of our compensation practices overall because it provides a more granular view that considers many important factors known to affect an individual's compensation. For this reason, we use pay equity as the standard we hold ourselves accountable to in order to confirm that our compensation practices and reward structure are free of bias.
We remain committed to maintaining 100% pay equity for colleagues across genders globally and across races and ethnicities in the US by continuing our annual pay equity review process going forward.