Why diversity matters: A message for Singapore on International Women's Day

EVERY time we celebrate another International Women's Day, I'm reminded that workplace diversity and inclusion can't be just a one-day endeavour, but must be an integral part of a company's sustained drive toward excellence. Research bears this out. Three years ago, my McKinsey colleagues published a pathbreaking study which showed that inclusive, diverse companies in the United Kingdom and United States enjoy pronounced performance advantages over their competitors. Now their expanded and updated research, covering 1,000 companies in Singapore and 11 other countries, finds that the correlation between diversity and company financial performance remains strong, and holds true internationally.

Correlation, of course, isn't the same as causation - which is to say, increasing inclusion and diversity won't necessarily lead to better performance. But the relationship between diversity and performance is real, persists over time, and applies across geographies. For companies based in Singapore, understanding the case for inclusion and diversity could help them develop effective programmes of their own. Here's a look at some of the most striking findings from the report, which I recommend highly.

Companies in Singapore generally have narrower gaps in ethnic/cultural diversity than in gender diversity. The representation of ethnic/cultural minorities on Singaporean executive teams (12 per cent) and boards (10 per cent) is near the level of minority representation in Singapore's population (13 per cent). With respect to workforce gender diversity, Singapore is one of Asia Pacific's more progressive countries but lags some advanced economies. Singapore has half as many women as men in leadership positions - a higher proportion than Asia Pacific as a whole, but lower than the top ratio in the region. For professional and technical jobs, Singapore's 0.91 ratio of women to men is below the Asia-Pacific average of 0.95. And even though the country's labour-force participation rate for women doubled between 1970 and 2016, Singapore's overall ratio of women to men in the workforce, at 0.76, is still below Australia's ratio of 0.83 and New Zealand's 0.85.