Performance:
Spectrum
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Uneven Results:
The Social Performance Spectrum
After collecting the survey data, we wondered: Do organizations with a high level of conviction in one area of social practices tend to be high conviction across all social practices? Or do organizations have high conviction in some areas more than others?
To answer this question, we analyzed survey participants’ responses to the trinary questions where the three response options were:
Yes
No
Work is in Progress
For the purpose of this exercise, Yes responses were deemed to reflect a high level of conviction for a given practice while Work is in Progress or Under Consideration was deemed to reflect a mid-range level of conviction, and No was deemed to reflect a lower level of conviction for a given practice.
For example, a survey participant that responded Yes to the question, “Does your organization have a formal policy/program dedicated to DEI?” was assigned a high level of conviction for DEI policies/programs. A participant that responded “No” was assigned a low level of conviction for DEI policies/programs.
Next, we identified nine survey participants with the highest level of conviction across all questions, meaning they responded Yes to the highest number of trinary questions throughout the survey. These participants are listed anonymously in Figure 40, where Participant A responded Yes to 95% of the trinary questions, Participant D responded Yes to 85% of the trinary questions, and so forth.
As shown in the table, we divided their responses into six themes covered in this survey: governance & strategy, human capital management, employee health & safety, DEI, Indigenous reconciliation and human rights. Those who responded Yes to all questions within a given theme are indicated with a green cell for that theme. Those who responded Yes to some but not all questions in a given theme are marked with a yellow cell, while those who responded No to all questions within a given theme are marked with a red cell.
We can draw several conclusions from the analysis presented in Figure 40. First, no participants were high conviction across all the survey questions. This tells us that no organization is exemplary across the board; all are on a spectrum or a journey with respect to social practices and social performance management.
No organization is exemplary across the board. All are on a spectrum or a journey.
Second, only 9 out of 73 participants had a high level of conviction for 75% or more of the trinary questions in this survey. This amplifies the first point; organizations are on a wide spectrum when it comes to social practices.
Third, we can see that the nine highest-conviction organizations within our sample tend to be more advanced in the areas of human capital management and employee health & safety, as these are the columns with the highest levels of conviction as reflected by the green cells. This supports the notion that organizations are focusing on their people in the post-pandemic world. It is also not surprising since those two themes are often tied to executive compensation, as presented earlier in Figure 6. Although we acknowledge the dataset for executive compensation is taken from a different sample and comprises only U.S. public companies, it is a useful proxy for observing general trends in compensation practices among businesses operating in North America.
While the highest conviction organizations show advanced commitments to human capital management and employee health and safety, their commitments to DEI and Indigenous reconciliation are less mature.
Fourth, we can see that DEI and Indigenous reconciliation are the themes where the some of the highest conviction survey participants tend to have more moderate levels of conviction. In other words, DEI and reconciliation are less well-developed practice areas, even amongst organizations that are highly committed to social practices. Interestingly, as shown in Figure 6, DEI is the social theme that tends to be most often linked to executive compensation. We therefore speculate that DEI and reconciliation are less well developed due to their relative newness as focus areas for businesses. Moreover, due to a lack of benchmarks covering all social practices, market participants may not be aware of what constitutes leading or high conviction practices across all aspects of social performance. Our research helps to fill that gap.
Figure 40: High Conviction Analysis
Organization | % High Conviction | Governance & Strategy | Human Capital Mgmt. | Employee Health & Safety | DEI | Indigenous Reconciliation | Human Rights |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Participant A | 95% | ||||||
Participant B | 95% | ||||||
Participant C | 90% | ||||||
Participant D | 85% | ||||||
Participant E | 85% | ||||||
Participant F | 85% | ||||||
Participant G | 85% | ||||||
Participant H | 80% | ||||||
Participant I | 75% |
- High Conviction
- Mid-Level Conviction
- Low Conviction