Are most employers tracking diversity in hiring and recruitment?

By Dom DiFurio | Stacker NONGASIMO // Shutterstock (Stacker) – Diversity initiatives date back to the 1960s, but 2020 sparked a wave that led employers to make very vocal pledges to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion inside their organizations. Executives at Walmart, Citigroup, Bank of America, Nike, PwC, Comcast, Johnson & Johnson, and dozens of others took to cable news shows to espouse the business benefits of building more diverse workforces and pledged billions to organizations fighting racial injustice.  Between 2019 and 2022, positions for chief diversity and inclusion officers rose almost 170%, according to a LinkedIn study. This growth has increased diversity tracking in hiring and recruitment. Revelo identified the top business areas where employers track diversity, using data from a May 2021 report by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Harvard Business Review. The report analyzed survey results gathered between April and May 2021 from over 1,100 organizational leaders in North America. Of those, 65% listed DEI as “a high strategic priority.” Significant differences existed among the three categories of respondents: leaders (those who say their organization is successful in improving DEI), laggards (those who say their organization is unsuccessful), and followers (those who fall in...