Kantar, the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company today further extended its commitment to inclusion and diversity by joining The Valuable 500, the global movement putting disability on the business leadership agenda.
Unveiled at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in January 2019, the campaign calls on 500 global businesses to commit to placing disability inclusion on their board agendas, making a firm commitment to eradicating the exclusion of disabled people in business. Over 200 companies have now pledged to take a definitive stand on diversity encompassing disability in the workplace.
Fulfilling its pledge to take action in 2020, Kantar will undertake an audit of its global real estate footprint, starting the process of ensuring the workplace is fully accessible to everyone. Kantar has also agreed to partner with The Valuable 500 in updating how we measure the inclusion experience of people living with disabilities in the Kantar Inclusion Index, our global benchmarking and change management tool that helps companies move the ‘inclusion and diversity’ conversation from ‘counting heads’ to ‘making each head count’.
In 2019, the Kantar Inclusion Index revealed that if you are working with a physical or mental disability, you are one and a half times more likely to have been discriminated against in terms of your health and wellbeing. Of more concern, 46% of those that are considered disabled have been bullied and harassed at their company within the last 12 months.
Kantar’s commitment to The Valuable 500 is the latest in a series of internally focused and client-facing commitments to lead in the inclusion and diversity debate including:
- The establishment of Inclusion & Diversity committees in every global business and function, and more than 30 markets around the world; each with their own priorities and goals.
- The establishment of formal goals for gender and ethnically representative leadership and succession planning in our biggest markets.
- A global training program for the most senior male executives in the organisation focused on inclusive leadership.
- A program of 20+ workshops around the world for 700+ senior leaders on the new growth and performance opportunities made possible through an inclusive and diverse workforce.
In 2018 Kantar launched the first Reykjavik Index, the World’s first measurement of how people feel about women in power. The Index measures the perceived legitimacy of male and female leadership in politics across twenty professions around the world.
In April 2019, Kantar provided pro bono funding to the Market Research Society to research and publish ‘Where We Stand: Inclusion, Equality and Diversity Industry Report’ that presented key findings on gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and age within the market research industry.
In June 2019 Kantar announced a global partnership with Special Olympics, the global movement that unleashes the human spirit through the transformative power of inclusion through sport, leadership development, health advocacy, school engagement and youth leadership. Together Kantar and Special Olympics are working on identifying ways to help businesses break down barriers to employing people with intellectual disabilities. In 2019 Kantar also launched The Inclusion Index, the first global tool to measure employees’ inclusion experience as judged by the employee.
Discussing our commitment, Vikki Leach, global head of inclusion & diversity at Kantar, said “At Kantar, we aim to help everyone flourish in this extraordinary world. This is, by definition, a goal that requires us to address inclusion and diversity issues from multiple directions. Our commitment to The Valuable 500 starts us on the journey of addressing the challenges faced by those living with disabilities. Beyond playing our part within our own organisation we’ll also strive to inform the debate with new, deeper insights in Kantar’s Inclusion Index research. This is an important part of our commitment. It is only through the compilation of evidence that we can measure our social norms and hold ourselves, our leaders or our actions to account.”