Despite a changing legal landscape that seeks to diminish the support for diversity in the workplace, studies continue to show that a diverse and inclusive workplace benefits a company and its investors. Benefits include access to top talent, better understanding of consumer preferences, a stronger mix of leadership skills, informed strategy discussions, and improved risk management. As investors, we must be able to assess if a company has a strong workplace culture and talent retention, thus we ask for transparency and disclosure of its diversity data. As our CEO, Kristin Hull has stated, “We want to invest in companies that understand and excel in their human capital management practices. Companies that prioritize company culture are those we expect to outperform in the future."
Fortinet
The resolution requested that Fortinet publish a report assessing its diversity and inclusion efforts, disclosing the process that the Board follows for assessing the effectiveness of its programs and any goals, metrics, and trends related to its promotion, recruitment and retention of protected classes of employees.
Our resolution went to vote and lost.
IBM
The resolution requested that Fortinet publish a report assessing its diversity and inclusion efforts, disclosing the process that the Board follows for assessing the effectiveness of its programs and any goals, metrics, and trends related to its promotion, recruitment and retention of protected classes of employees.
Our resolution went to vote and won.
Sarepta
The resolution requested that Sarepta publish a report assessing its diversity and inclusion efforts, disclosing the process that the Board follows for assessing the effectiveness of its programs and any goals, metrics, and trends related to its promotion, recruitment and retention of protected classes of employees.
We withdrew our resolution as a result of Sarepta's commitment to increase the publicly available information on its diversity and inclusion practices, including the release of some high-level data related to metrics and trends.
Sunpower
The resolution requested that Sunpower publish a report assessing its diversity and inclusion efforts, disclosing the process that the Board follows for assessing the effectiveness of its programs and any goals, metrics, and trends related to its promotion, recruitment and retention of protected classes of employees.
March 2020 - We withdrew our resolution as a result of Sunpower's commitment to a cross-functional working group to develop its diversity and inclusion programs, has engaged the board meaningfully on this topic, and is building out its reporting capabilities related to the promotion and recruitment of diverse employees.
First Solar
This resolution requested that First Solar to publish quantattive data on effectiveness of the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, including quantitative metrics for hiring, retention, and promotion of employees, including data by gender, race, and ethnicity.
March 2020 - We withdrew our resolution as a result of First Solar's commitment to disclose its consolidated EEO-1 data by end July 2022 and sisclose its recruitment, retention and promotion rates by gender, race and ethnicity by the end of Q2, 2024 .