In April this year, Forbes published its rankings for the ‘Best Employers for Diversity’ for 2024, in which Progressive Insurance ranked the highest for the third consecutive year. Once a celebration of companies that address underlying issues of equity and equality among America’s workforce, these rankings now have the potential to become a space of contention, following the changing political climate.
Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) initiatives within the schooling system were discriminatory for introducing racial and ethnic considerations into the screening process. The decision effectively deemed race-based affirmative action within university admission processes unconstitutional and opened the doors for a host of challenges to existing DEI programs within the higher education system and the workplace. DEI programs, when they were first introduced, aimed to level the playing field in terms of access to opportunities for self-development, and were therefore welcomed into the mainstream consciousness with open arms. Now, however, the tides have shifted enough that DEI programs are being met with resistance from the very public they seek to serve. Forbes’ ranking this year for America’s Employers for Diversity therefore almost reads as a political statement in the face of the Supreme Court ruling, a commercial commitment to values that the country’s laws had deemed irrelevant.
The Forbes list for 2024 is its seventh annual ranking and is compiled with the help of prominent market research company Statista. The ranking is primarily based on survey responses from over 170,000 people employed in organisations with a roster of a minimum of 1,000 heads in the U.S. These surveys asked respondents to rate their employer’s approaches to creating an inclusive environment in the workplace and business in relation to various criteria such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Respondents also answered questions about companies and organisations they knew about through friends and family. The researchers behind the listing also assessed over 1,300 employers based in the U.S., grading them on their approach to accountability, communication, and representation. All these elements were then incorporated into a scoring model that scored all the companies being assessed, culminating in the final ranking that listed the 500 companies with the highest scores in the country.
Progressive Corp., an insurance holding company that provides services related to personal and commercial auto insurance, residential and other speciality property-casualty insurance, ranks the highest in the ‘Best Employers for Diversity’ listing this year. The company, claims ownership to a long history, having been founded in 1965. The company has an assigned leadership position for diversity, equity, and inclusion: the Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Marisa Afzali, who currently holds this position, comments that this ranking is representative of the company’s efforts in creating a workforce that ‘reflects the customers they serve, and a leadership team that reflects the people they lead in a fair and inclusive environment.”
According to Marisa Afzali, the company’s efforts in creating an equal and equitable environment are commercially beneficial as much as it is anything else. This is because Progressive Corp. treats the U.S. adult population as a proxy for its current and potential consumer base. Reflecting the growing multiple identities of this populace allows the company to capitalise on the diversity of talent and qualifications that they bring from different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to the metaphorical table.
According to Director Afzali, the company is working even harder to promote DEI values within the workplace. The company partners with an employee resource group, the Disabilities Awareness Network, to hold design conferences that aim to improve the accessibility of products and services for people with various disabilities, ranging from physical to psychological. According to Afzali, they consider the rich range of human diversity to fulfil “as many user needs as possible when designing something.”
According to the Statista analytics that the Forbes’ ranking is based on, organisations belonging to industries such as education, healthcare, and financial services institutions tend to be the companies making the most efforts in terms of furthering DEI values within the workplace. Improving diversity, equity, and inclusivity values within the company is seen less as a DEI exercise and more as a crucial element of improving overall competitiveness by attracting top talent, fostering innovation, improving decision-making, and ultimately, enhancing brand reputation.
(Theruni Liyanage)