Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2024

The World Economic Forum's 2024 DEI Lighthouses report showcases seven high-impact corporate initiatives and six additional highlights designed to reduce systemic inequities. It argues that DEI is a strategic business imperative that drives innovation and resilience, and it outlines five common success factors for effective implementation: nuanced root-cause understanding, meaningful definitions of success, accountable leadership, context-specific solutions, and rigorous tracking.

• The report identifies five common success factors for DEI initiatives that achieve significant, scalable, and sustained impact: a nuanced understanding of root causes, a meaningful definition of success, accountable and invested business leaders, solutions designed for the specific context, and rigorous tracking with course correction.
• Banco Pichincha in Ecuador reduced the financing gap between men and women by 16% between December 2020 and May 2023 by implementing gender-specific products, changing internal policies, and issuing a $100 million gender bond for women entrepreneurs.
• HEINEKEN increased the representation of women senior managers in its sales function from 9% in 2020 to 19% in 2022 through a global programme focused on recruitment, retention, and development.
• Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) used regulatory mandates to ban single-gender boards, contributing to an increase in female directors on listed issuer boards from 14.4% in 2020 to 17.3% by December 2023.
• Ingka Group (IKEA) achieved a 50/50 gender balance in manager positions (50.2%) and reduced its pay gender gap to under 5% across all levels through gender-neutral salary reviews and inclusive succession plans.
• McKinsey & Company implemented a reboarding programme for parents returning from leaves longer than 12 weeks, resulting in a 20% decline in attrition among European consultant mothers.
• PepsiCo utilized a global self-ID campaign to improve LGBTQI+ inclusion, resulting in 12,475 employees across 33 countries voluntarily identifying their sexual orientation and gender identity, and 63,000 employees across 71 countries updating their displayed names.
• Salesforce's 'Warmline' initiative, which provides confidential one-on-one coaching for underrepresented groups to overcome systemic barriers, has supported over 2,400 employees since 2020 and increased participant retention.
• Additional highlighted initiatives demonstrate the expansion of DEI into value chains and neurodiversity, such as Baker Hughes increasing direct spend with diverse and small businesses from $83 million in 2021 to $233 million in 2022, and SAP employing over 235 colleagues on the autistic spectrum across 16 countries as of Q3 2023.

APA

World Economic Forum (2023). Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2024. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Diversity_Equity_and_Inclusion_Lighthouses_2024.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2024. 2023. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Diversity_Equity_and_Inclusion_Lighthouses_2024.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2024 |date=December 2023 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Diversity_Equity_and_Inclusion_Lighthouses_2024.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2023diversity, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2024}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2023}, month = dec, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Diversity_Equity_and_Inclusion_Lighthouses_2024.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }