Navigant joins the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion initiative
To improve diversity and inclusion among some of the world's biggest companies, the CEOs of more than 250 leading organisations have pledged their support for the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion initiative. The initiative is focused on starting a workplace conversation around diversity and inclusion, dealing with unconscious and implicit biases and sharing best-practices. A number of professional services firms’ CEOs have signed up, with Julie Howard, the CEO of Navigant, the latest to commit to the initiative.
Diversity and inclusion have become increasingly prominent issues for companies across the globe, with various arguments – some from ethics, others from more business case perspectives – tabled to see the needle moved to a broader business environment. One of the movements to reduce inequalities for various subaltern groups is the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion initiative.
The initiative involves key buy-ins from CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies and firms, each of whom have pledged three key pillars to tackle inclusion related issues across and within their own companies.
The three pillars commit signatories to the following:
1. We will continue to make our workplaces trusting places to have complex, and sometimes difficult, conversations about diversity and inclusion
2. We will implement and expand unconscious bias education
3. We will share best – and unsuccessful – practices
As it stands, more than 250 of the world’s most prominent CEOs have signed the pledge, including some of the CEOs of the world’s most renowned professional services and pure play consultancy firms, including the Big Four and Accenture, as well as mid-market players such as RSM and BDO, and the CEOs of McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company.
Management consultancy firm Navigant recently announced that Julie Howard, the firm’s Chairman and CEO, has also pledged the firm’s support behind the initiative. The firm’s commitment to the initiative reflects its wider efforts to support diversity and inclusion, which are already codified within the firm’s core values, which will see it continue to develop and implement "policies and practices that strengthen the fabric of the company and society".
The policies cover the firm’s growing footprint in the US and globally – last year, the consulting firm employed more than 5,500 people, served clients in 43 countries, and saw revenues break through the $1 billion barrier. The firm has, in recent years, won several awards in relation to its diversity and inclusion practices, including the Human Rights Campaign Foundation award for best place to work for LGBT equality.
