What does our Global Diversity data tell us?
Gender Balance
At the end of 2021, 51% of Kantar’s global workforce identified as women. Although we have established strong gender parity at the Group level, we saw a 3% decline in female representation in 2021. We have also seen a 4% increase in employees who identify as non-binary or chose not to disclose their gender identity. As such, we are now exploring options for our employees to self-describe their gender identity on our systems.
In 2021, we saw marginal gains in the representation of women at our most senior levels (Skales 90 & above) from 39% to 41% (skale is our internal, simple Global framework that defines each job and position within Kantar).
Promotions
In 2021, Kantar promoted more than 50% of women across all of our Skales. 53% of promotions at our leadership level roles (Skale 90 and above) were awarded to women.
Although promotions in 2020 were significantly affected by the impact of COVID-19, we have seen a positive increase of women promoted at all levels in 2021, consistently above the number of male promotions. This reflects our drive to support women at Kantar all levels of the organisation.
We are on a journey to make Kantar a truly inclusive and diverse place to work. Part of being able to assess our progress is having metrics that enable us to understand perceptions around how well we are doing already, and where people want us to focus in the future. This is why we use Kantar’s own Inclusion Index methodology to measure our progress around our employees’ sense of inclusion and belonging.
The Inclusion Index is comprised of three sub-indices created through factor analyses, based on an employee’s perception of the environment and their experience at the company.
The Inclusion Index provides us with a score out of 100. In 2020, we surveyed 5 of our markets and received a global benchmark score of 55. In 2021, we surveyed 37 of our markets with an overall response rate of 38%, and our score had improved to 69. There is broad recognition from our employees that active steps are being taken to become more diverse and inclusive, with a clear impact on attrition and colleagues that leave our business if we don’t get this right.
Our 2021 Inclusion Index results have been used to inform our I&D strategy moving forwards; we have the ambition to improve our Inclusion Index results by 5 points by 2025 with an overall response rate of at least 50%.
Diversity data is essential to understand and support our diverse workforce. Following the success of our #BeCounted campaign in North America, which significantly increased disclosure rates of employees' ethnicities, one of our core priorities for 2022 is to expand this program into other Kantar markets, to increase the disclosure of ethnicity data and other aspects of diversity, such as disability and sexual orientation.
Prior to starting the #BeCounted campaign we had less than 30% of the staff who disclosed their ethnicity. After the campaign we moved the needle to 92%.
Jump ahead to our ‘Looking forward’ section to read more about our #BeCounted campaign through 2022 and beyond.
We have pay parity by gender across all levels of the business this year in Singapore. And we have achieved 50/50 gender parity at the senior leadership levels across Singapore. A huge achievement. We have continued to track this regularly, and partnered closely with our HR teams in Talent Acquisition and Reward to ensure we are staying true to our goals.
