88% of companies globally still include diversity and inclusion in workforce reports

Even as some companies have abandoned parental leave and well-being benefits that support a diverse workforce, DEI reporting appears to have remained a priority, at least in internal documents.

That’s according to the Workforce Disclosure Initiative (WDI), a new Thomson Reuters analysis of roughly 3,000 global companies that looked at the topics companies covered in internal documents, as well as key performance indicators (KPIs) for executive pay and changes in benefits and other priorities.

Shifting benefits priorities. Perhaps one of the more concerning data points from the report indicates that fewer companies have public policies on discrimination and harassment than they did in previous years. In 2020, 94% of companies had public policies on these issues, compared to just 70% in 2025.

“Such policies are typically considered a baseline expectation, suggesting that even widely established commitments may not be consistently maintained over time,” the report noted.

Shared parental leave also appears to have declined, mainly in the US, where there are no federally mandated parental leave policies. A record 77% of respondents offered parental leave in 2020, but that number fell to 22% in 2025. Health and well-being programs have also declined in the US. In 2020, 86% of companies had health and well-being programs; just 11% said the same in 2025.

DEI remains in documents. Since 2024, several companies in the US have publicly announced that they will no longer tie DEI goals to executive pay. But the report found that one in five companies globally still use DEI as an executive pay performance metric.

Overall, companies appear hesitant to report on many worker demographics, such as sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. Just 32% of respondents report on disability representation, while 26% report workforce ethnicity data. However, 53% of respondents have DEI targets that mainly focus on gender diversity, while 8% set ethnicity targets and 5% have goals for disability representation.

“Unlike gender reporting, we are still far from meaningful global benchmarking for disability nor ethnicity,” Katie Fowler, director of responsible business at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said.

The report found that 88.5% of companies include DEI in board oversight documents, “suggesting that despite political and public pushback in some markets, these issues do continue to be treated by most companies as a core workforce governance priority.”

Diversity and inclusion remain one of the most common governance topics for companies in the UK, Europe, and North America, second to training and development. However, the report cautions that companies with DEI language or policies aren’t necessarily those seeing the most change within organizations.

The report noted that in the financial industry, which has the largest gender pay gap, the adoption of diversity programs may have been a response to problems, rather than an indicator of progress on equality.

“Setting public targets is a critical step in translating diversity aspirations into measurable commitments.”