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Best workplaces for DE&I 2024

Here are all the factors that make a company inclusive

"People want to work in environments that value diversity and reward merit. Some realities have understood this before others and today dictate the rules of a new world of work," comments Alessandro Zollo, CEO of Great place to work

by Silvia Pagliuca

10 July 2024

6' min read

6' min read

Involvement, culture of error, fairness. These are the pillars on which the new world of work is built. The coordinates that guide human capital in rewarding (or failing) organisations. This is what emerges from the 2024 Best Workplaces™ for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion survey by Great place to work, which, after surveying 288 companies and interviewing 127,489 employees, rewarded 20 realities that have been able to promote an inclusive culture based on values, standards and practices that take into account the needs of all, building transparent and, therefore, high-performance workplaces.

"Never before have people wanted to work in environments that value diversity and reward merit. Some realities have understood this sooner than others and are now dictating the rules of a new world of work, characterised by a strong connection between economics and biology," comments Alessandro Zollo, CEO of Great place to work. "Just as in biology diversity creates innovation and adaptation to the environment, in economics too attention to diversity creates an environment of trust that allows people to make mistakes, thus to innovate and, consequently, to stay on the market.

The companies with the best DE&I strategies

There are 20 award-winning companies and they include the opinions of 13,257 employees, or 7 per cent of the competing companies. Of these, 7 are large companies with over 500 employees, the rest are medium-sized companies, of which 6 are between 150 and 499 employees and 7 others between 50 and 149 employees. We are talking, in particular, about: Teleperformance Italia, GalileoPro, Cisco Systems Italy, Bending Spoons (last year at the top of the ranking), Skylabs, Storeis, Hilton, American Express, Biogen Italia Srl, Agile Lab, unifix SWG Srl, ServiceNow, ConTe.it, Fiscozen, DHL Express, AbbVie, IoInvesto, Webranking, Mondelez, Vianova. All of these companies showed excellent results (over 87%) in the three indicators considered, namely: Trust Index, GPTW Statement and DE&I Index 2024, showing a clear lead over the other companies analysed.

Striking are the most represented sectors, namely: Information & Technology (five companies, or 25 per cent) and Financial Services & Insurance (four companies, or 20 per cent), where the gender and age gap is particularly high. Yet their very presence shows that it is possible to create an inclusive culture even for groups that are less well represented in all economic sectors. "A few FinTech scale-ups in particular stand out, as they have started to energise the sector and increasingly distinguish themselves by creating positive working environments for all. If these companies have placed so much emphasis on implementing DE&I policies, it is because they have been reflected in the numbers," Zollo clarifies. Diversity, equity and inclusion are indeed ethical issues, but not only. Inclusive, transparent companies, attentive to the psychological well-being of individuals and to the balance between personal and working life, are also more attractive companies and more capable of engaging people, rather than driving them away.

"It is unfortunate to note, however, that the sectors that are having the most difficulty in DE&I are those that drive the Italian economy: fashion, food, mechanics. We need a management that is ready to innovate, to move away from logics based on presentialism and control, to embrace new value dimensions. In this transformation, those who train the managers of the future must also be involved,' the CEO points out, anticipating the data of a forthcoming research carried out on 30 thousand people in 21 European countries on the basis of the Great Place To Work questionnaire from which it emerges that Italy is last in Europe for satisfaction with the working environment. "Less than one out of two people in Italy is satisfied with their job, equal to 44%. This is a disarming figure if we consider that the average is 57% and that in northern Europe it is as high as 68%", Zollo points out, while acknowledging that it is not easy to work on DE&I: "These are policies that take time to produce results, but once they become an integral part of organisations, they really make a difference".

The raw nerve of equity

Fairness is one of the aspects that companies are called upon to focus on most. Among the award-winning realities, in fact, the value of respondents who consider the level of fairness satisfactory is 84%, while in the other realities this figure drops to 60%. This is not surprising, after all, if one considers that this area concerns pay equity, opportunities for development and growth, and meritocracy, issues that are generally critical in all organisational environments. Going into more detail, it can be seen that the statements with the widest gap concern meritocracy: here, more than 80 per cent of the employees of the 'best' companies respond positively, compared to just over half of the other companies. The statement 'promotions go to those who deserve them most', in particular, gets a positive response of 83%, which drops to 57% among the companies outside the ranking. Looking at pay equity, on the other hand, the statement 'Here people are paid fairly for the work they do' is rated positively by 76% of respondents from 'top' companies, and only 52% of respondents from other companies.

On the other hand, the results that have to do with the other two pillars of DE&I, i.e. inclusion and diversity, are excellent, demonstrating how these themes have effectively entered the vocabulary and actions of companies.

Looking at demographic characteristics, another distinction emerges between the 'best' companies and the others. On both gender and age gap, the award-winning companies demonstrate substantial equality of treatment and, consequently, a positive climate. In the 'best' companies, in fact, 94% of women think that people are treated impartially regardless of gender, while in the other companies this percentage drops to 81%. Similarly, on the age front, in the award-winning companies all employees feel equally involved, while in the other companies employees belonging to minority groups, consisting of those under 25 and over 55, complain of unequal treatment based on age.

How much do levels and contracts weigh

Another aspect considered by the survey concerns the impact of organisational level on the perception of DE&I. In the best companies, the positivity of the employees' experience decreases slightly as the organisational level decreases (gap of 7 points between directors and employees), while in the other companies surveyed, the gaps between the various levels are more pronounced, up to 17 points. "I am treated as an integral part of the company, irrespective of my role" is a statement to which the majority of employees in the award-winning companies respond positively, while in the other companies it is clearly noticeable that lower scores correspond to the decreasing organisational level.

Similarly, with respect to the type of contract, there is a five-point gap between part-time and full-time employees in non-premium companies. This is a typical challenge in the labour market, as those who are with the company half-time tend to have fewer opportunities for growth and training than their full-time colleagues. In top companies, on the other hand, there are no significant differences between the two groups, showing how it is possible to create working environments that make everyone feel part of the company.

The knot of involvement

In the analysed companies that are not among the top 20, the difference in work experience between those who have been with the company for less than 2 years and those who have been with the company for more than 20 years is as much as 12 points. This shows that as time goes by, the positive perception of the working environment decreases and therefore that companies fail to maintain a positive level of engagement in all employees. This is a central aspect of the work experience. The statement "Here we appreciate people experimenting with new ways of working, regardless of the result", for example, receives appreciation from almost 9 out of 10 employees in the "best" companies, and only just over 6 out of 10 in the other companies surveyed.

Relating these results to the answers given to the phrase 'I plan to work here for a long time', the corporate population appears divided into four categories: ambassadors, quiet quitter, flight risk and not attached. Ambassadors, i.e. those who are very attached to the company, are far higher in the 'top' companies than in the others: 88% versus 69% where, on the other hand, quiet quitters (four times as many) and flight risk (three times as many) are much more present. "It is precisely the group of quiet quitters that is probably the most problematic for companies: whereas until a few months ago, workers with little involvement were inclined to leave their jobs to look for more stimulating realities, today they tend to stay. And this could do even worse to companies, lowering productivity levels,' Zollo continues.

Ultimately, companies that want to improve their DE&I performance should convey to their employees a sense of belonging and trust, foster involvement regardless of hierarchical level or seniority, without discriminating on the basis of role, making people feel valued and considered. And, above all, they should promote a climate based on impartiality and fair treatment, take care of people's mental and emotional health and develop a new culture of error. "In Italy, we are children of a blame culture that tends to hold back any form of innovation out of the box, but this is precisely what we need if we want to create companies capable of meeting the challenges of the future of work,' Zollo concludes.