Now in its 10th year, the DiversityInc Top 50 competition is an editorial, objective process, obtained through a detailed, analytic survey of more than 200 questions.
The overall intent is not just to track metrics but to draw an accurate picture of a company's culture.
The survey is sent to any company requesting it that has more than 1,000 U.S. employees. There is no fee to enter and no requirement to advertise. Every company that enters receives a free report card based on all four areas we measure (CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Corporate and Organizational Communications, and Supplier Diversity), plus a total point score.
Companies are assessed within the context of their industries and employee skill sets. The questions have predetermined weightings and are evaluated based on ratios of certain questions, such as work-force demographics compared with new-hire demographics, and relativity of one subject to another, such as mentoring best practices and management promotions.
The questions are reviewed by our research team for errors, and companies are contacted and allowed to resubmit data. After data has been statistically analyzed, the list is submitted for editorial review with the names of the companies stripped out to eliminate any possibility of favoritism.
Companies must demonstrate consistent strength in four key areas:
- CEO Commitment is the most heavily weighted area in the survey. Questions examine the CEO's personal involvement in diversity, how she/he holds executives accountable for diversity success and board-of-director demographics.
- Human Capital includes race/ethnicity/gender/age-demographics questions surrounding the work force, new hires, management by levels, promotions and retention. We do not count demographic areas in which companies significantly over-index demographically. This category also includes questions on work/life benefits and recruitment strategies, including those aimed at LGBT people and people with disabilities.
- Corporate and Organizational Communications examines such internal factors as employee-resource groups, mentoring and employee surveys, and such external factors as philanthropic contributions, multicultural marketing and web-site communication of diversity branding.
- Supplier Diversity looks at percent of procurement budgets spent with suppliers owned by Blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, women, LGBT people and people with disabilities. It also examines whether supplier-diversity numbers are audited and have third-party certification; whether companies include supplier diversity in their requests for proposals (RFPs); and whether they mentor suppliers and offer them financial assistance.
Global diversity has become increasingly important in this survey and has been measured for the past two years for companies with more than 10 percent of employees outside of the United States. Global questions include whether companies have employee-resource groups globally and whether they refuse to do business in countries that have values they perceive as oppressive.
Any company that does not offer health benefits to same-sex partners of employees is automatically excluded from the DiversityInc Top 50 and the 11 specialty lists.
The same survey is also used to determine those specialty lists:
