Globalising our diversity engagement
Given the potential financial materiality of corporate diversity across global markets, LGIM’s Investment Stewardship team has decided to expand and deepen its engagement on diversity in strategic and representative emerging market countries. Our paper, Globalising our diversity engagement, seeks to explore how these emerging markets are approaching diversity and lay the groundwork for future engagement on this issue. We encourage companies, other investors and clients to read this thought-piece which we hope will encourage discussion and debate on diversity in our global business structures.
We believe companies should view improving diversity as an opportunity, with lack of diversity as a potential risk.
LGIM’s Investment Stewardship team believes that workplace diversity which brings together a mix of skills, experience and perspectives, is essential to help companies perform at their best. There could even be risks associated with not employing a diverse workforce. In our paper, Globalising our diversity engagement, we’ve looked at representative emerging markets in Brazil, India, China and South Africa to provide a more global perspective on the conversation around diversity, one that has not yet been given much attention in the asset management industry.
We share our key research findings, offer our overview of what we believe may need to happen to support moves to establish more diverse team structures, and outline the actions we’re taking to expand the reach of our engagement on diversity.