In 2015, consulting firm McKinsey & Co.’s “Why Diversity Matters” report revealed a positive, statistically significant correlation between executive team diversity and financial performance. The company last year conducted an extensive re-fielding of that study, which included a deep dive into the personnel makeup of 1,007 companies across 12 countries. Select U.S. data from that “Delivering through Diversity” report is presented here.
■ Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. Similarly, the top one-quarter of the companies that were more ethnically/culturally diverse were 33% more profitable than the least diverse companies.
■ Sodexo and its Centerplate division operate food and beverage at nine major league sports venues in the U.S. and are the dominant third-party concessionaire on college campuses. The company’s internal research, according to McKinsey, “revealed that greater representation of women in management positions — between 40% and 60% women — correlated with superior performance on measures such as customer satisfaction and employee engagement.”
■ Seven women are on the company’s BOD, according to its most recent shareholder meeting, as are 37% of its executive committee and nearly half of its 460,000 employees worldwide.
