How can companies drive diversity? 10 lessons from PwC

HB2, AKA “the bathroom bill,” continues to generate international headlines about what’s happening on the diversity front in North Carolina. Regardless of one’s attitude about the rights or wrongs of the legislation, the debate is intensifying as election day nears.

However, driving corporate diversity and inclusion is an increasingly important issue worldwide.

So how can companies drive more diversity within their own ranks of management and employees?

Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers cites 10 lessons learned from its own efforts, starting with: Make a business case for diversity then make it “resonate” within your firm.

In a report published Sunday, “The PwC diversity journey: Creating impact, achieving results,” the international firm says its own efforts are an example that “diversity must be embedded into the organisation’s DNA – and leadership must be committed to and accountable for diversity.”

PwC says it has improved the global leadership team’s diversity by the appointment of a leadership team that includes 44 percent women. Overall, PwC says it also improved its Global Inclusion Index by six percentage points.

(The index “measures 12 inclusion behaviors in a global environment. Those behaviors are then cross-references with ROI questions (self-reported retention, engagement, productivity and innovation). The G2I is used to establish a baseline of metrics on inclusion by site and/or by business unit/region when conducted on an enterprise basis. Disparities between behavior importance and frequency and also across specific groups will be identified as issue indicators,” says InclusionINC.)

Bob Moritz, the PwC chair, says diversity is “the right thing to do” and also “makes business sense.”

“By sharing experiences and ideas we can all learn from each other and drive the change we need,” he says.

The 10 top lessons: