Berkshire Hathaway Inc: Greater Disclosure of Material Corporate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Data
WHEREAS: “In neither the purchase of goods nor the hiring of personnel, do we ever consider the religious views, the gender, the race or the sexual orientation of the persons we are dealing with. It would not only be wrong to do so, it would be idiotic. We need all of the talent we can find, and we have learned that able and trustworthy managers, employees and suppliers come from a very wide spectrum of humanity.”
-- Warren E. Buffett, February 28, 2002
Companies should look to hire the best talent. However, Black and Latino applicants face recruitment challenges. Results of a meta-analysis study of 24 field experiments, dating back to 1990, found that, with identical resumes, White applicants receive, an average of 36 percent more callbacks than Black applicants and 24 percent more callbacks than Latino applicants.”
Promotion rates show how well diverse talent is nurtured at a company. Unfortunately, women and non-White employees experience “a broken rung” in their careers. For every 100 men who are promoted, only 86 women are promoted. Non-White women are particularly impacted, comprising 17 percent of the entry-level workforce and only 4 percent of executives.
Morgan Stanley has found that: “Employee retention that is above industry peer averages can indicate the presence of competitive advantage. This advantage may lead to higher levels of future profitability than past financial performance would indicate.” Companies with high employee satisfaction have also been linked to annualized outperformance of over two percent.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (“Berkshire Hathaway”) has not yet committed to release standardized workforce composition data, at any level of its businesses. Nor has it released sufficient recruitment, retention, and promotion data to allow investors to determine the effectiveness of Berkshire Hathaway’s companies’ human capital management programs.
Eighty-one percent of the S&P100 have released, or have committed to release, their EEO-1 forms, best practice in workforce composition reporting. The number of S&P100 companies releasing this form increased 239 percent between September 2020 and September 2021. The number of S&P100 companies releasing recruitment rate data bay gender, race, and ethnicity increased by 234 percent; companies releasing retention rate data increased by 79 percent, and companies releasing promotion rate data increased by 379 percent. Berkshire Hathaway is an outlier in its decision to withhold these data sets.
BE IT RESOLVED: Shareholders request that Berkshire Hathaway or its holding companies report to shareholders on the outcomes of their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts by publishing quantitative data on workforce composition, and recruitment, retention, and promotion rates of employees by gender, race, and ethnicity. The reporting should be done at reasonable expense and exclude proprietary information.
SUPPORTING STATEMENT: Quantitative data is sought so investors can assess, understand, and compare the effectiveness of companies’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and apply this analysis to investors’ portfolio management and securities’ selection process.
Resolution Details
Company:
Berkshire Hathaway Inc
Lead Filer:
As You Sow
Year: 2022
Filing Date:
November 2021
Initiative(s): Diversity Data Disclosure
Status: 25.9% overall vote, (45.7% of independent shareholder votes)