Compendium Test

For each major employee group examined, representation
of women is lower for MSOs than
for programmers. However, CEOs at MSOs are
generally more likely to demonstrate support for
diversity initiatives than CEOs at programmers.
For example, 50% of MSOs report that their CEO
signs off on executive compensation targets tied
to diversity, compared to 20% of programmers.
Notably, 33% of MSOs report that their CEO
regularly meets with various employee resource
and affinity groups, compared to 20% of programmers.
Further, 33% of MSOs report that their
CEO is a member of the company’s diversity
council, compared to 10% of programmers. New
to the survey in 2017, MSOs and programmers
report that senior executives (i.e., CEO and
direct reports) are actively involved or engaged in
diversity and inclusion programs and initiatives at
roughly the same rates (50% vs. 54%). 13 Mercer’s
recent When Women Thrive research demonstrated
that “organizations with leaders who are actively
engaged in D&I have more women at the top, and
they hire, promote, and retain women at higher
rates relative to men.” 14
The ILM map in Figure 13 shows the flow of talent
throughout the participating MSOs in 2016. 15 The
majority of employees are located at the Staff level
(~61%), with about 19% at the Professional level
and 20% at the Manager level. Only about 1% of
employees are at the Executive/Sr. Manager level.
Similar to what we saw in the overall ILM map
for the industry, upward movement out of the
Staff level at MSOs is limited (1.7% promotion
rate), with more movement from the Professional
level to the Manager level (3.6% promotion rate).
Moves into the Executive/Sr. Manager level are
very rare (0.4% promotion rate). Moreover, hire
rates and exit rates are higher at lower levels of
the career hierarchy.
The ILM map in Figure 14 depicts the flow of
women and men in 2016 for MSOs. The map
shows that representation of women is lower
at higher career levels, ranging from 46% at the
Staff level to 27% at the Executive/Sr. Manager
level. Looking at promotion rates, the rate for
women and men is the same at the Staff level
(1.7%), slightly higher for women than men at the
Manager level (4.0% vs. 3.4%), and similar at the
Executive/Sr. Manager level (0.3% for women vs.
0.4% for men). Hire rates are higher for women as
compared to men at the Staff and Manager levels,
lower for women at the Professional level, and
comparable for women and men at the Executive/
Sr. Manager level. Exit rates are higher for women
than for men at the Staff and Manager levels,
and lower for women at the Professional and
Executive/Sr. Manager levels. The latter marks a
small improvement from the 2015 PAR Initiative
survey, where the exit rate for women exceeded
that of men at every career level except at the
Executive/Sr. Manager level.
13 Identified as companies that indicated senior executives are “Extremely” or “Very” involved/engaged in diversity and
inclusion programs/initiatives.
14 Mercer. When Women Thrive, Businesses Thrive, 2016, p.21, available at https://www.mercer.com/our-thinking/whenwomen-thrive.html.
15 The ILM map reflects six MSOs that provided the information needed to create the map. The Blue Collar career level has
been excluded.
2017 WICT PAR INITIATIVE EXECUTIVE REPORT
25