The different role players in DEI

We each have a role to play in fostering a diverse, inclusive and equitable society where everyone feels that they belong, and there is social justice for all. The below graphic is a summative overview that supports the message that the implementation of DEI is important across multiple sectors.

DEI Work begins at an individual level. Looking within: your beliefs thoughts and assumptions

The Individual Person Work

EARLY LIFE SHAPERS

Parents and guardians, elementary, junior and high schools.

INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING Universities, technical schools and colleges.

PLACES OF EMPLOYMENT

Private sector, not-for-profit, regulatory bodies and state-owned enterprises.

HUMAN RIGHTS & SOCIAL JUSTICE ORGANISATIONS Judiciary, community activists, unions.

FAITH-BASED & RELIGIOUS Churches, faith-based boards, councils and communitties.

THE STATE Government departments, monitoring arms of government municipalities.

THE LANDSCAPE OF DEI IN CORPORATE SA. WHY NUMBERS DON’T TELL THE FULL STORY.

The leading and most profittable organisations in South Africa are notably White and male-led - this in spite of many years of transformation. It is one of the main reasons why there is a need for sector practitioners to persistently raise awareness and pressure for organisations to transform visibly and meaningfully. Finding the information on Black ownership and Black leadership of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies brings unclarified data as it does not consider foreign ownership, definitions of race and the access to demographic information that provides some complexity in analysing the data accurately.

PricewaterhouseCoopers releases an annual report on Executive Leadership in South African which offers statistics for the top 200 JSE-listed companies. Only 19% of these companies have Black CEOs, 26% of the CFOs of the top companies are Black and 42% of the Executive Directors

White Coloured Black South African Indian/ Asian

CEO, CFO and ED representation by race (JSE Top 200 companies) are Black. Gender representation is even lower with only 15.6% of the Executive Directors being female.

This is perhaps not surprising if one has been in the boardrooms of large corporations in South Africa and other nations in Global South. Yet, those organisations will tell you they do have diversity and are transforming. I once sat in a boardroom where the organisation expressed that their management team was diverse – whilst the majority of the faces around the room were White men and the most senior leader was a White male expatriate. They did not see the irony in their assertion or maybe they considered having one Black face and one female face to be “sufficient” diversity. What was worse, it was the HR leader defending their diversity numbers, not the leaders themselves.

It speaks to the lip service organisations pay to diversity. Dischem’s CEO penned a memo around freezing White appointments that raised the ire of both Black and White consumers. The public outcry and media coverage died down after some time. However, Dischem reported profit before tax in the second half of FY2023 (September to February) was down 11% to R560 million (from R632 million). Moneyweb calculated the impact of negative publicity from the CEO’s memo to be around R273 million. And despite the measurable impact, the backlash and bad publicity, the organisation did not address this in their annual report to shareholders and have made no substantive efforts to rectify the underlying issue – a lack of genuine and authentic support for transformation.

They are not alone – many organisations publish their Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) scorecards, a legislative transformation tool used in South Africa, to which the Sanlam Gauge Report does an interesting analysis of these scorecards per industry. The focus is on the achievement of targets and management control remains the worst performing pillar on the scorecard of corporate South Africa. The analysis was accompanied by interviews and the strong message emanating in the report is that in the workplace, the reality is that transformation is not as advanced as the scorecards suggest.

Although there are positive gains and corporates that embrace diversity, actively working towards creating the necessary culture as well as shift in numbers in the organisation, the overall picture in South Africa indicates that there is still a long way to go in achieving the transformation we seek. There is enough evidence to prove that aiming to be ‘good enough’ by focusing on compliance is short sighted and is not sustainable.