PeopleReturn’s Transparency Score measures how much quantitative data companies disclose about their board demographics, workforce composition, employee development, and pay equity. This year, transparency across the S&P 500 declined meaningfully: the average score fell to 34 from 42.5 last year, with reductions across every category. Even the most transparent companies scored lower than a year ago, signaling a broad pullback in human-capital reporting.
A handful of companies still stand out for providing robust, consistent disclosure — including Altria, Hologic, American Water Works, and Edison International. At the same time, several large companies sharply reduced the data they publish, led by Mastercard, 3M, M&T Bank, and UnitedHealth Group. These declines generally reflect the removal of previously shared workforce (45.9 vs. 53.6) and board demographic data (29.5 vs. 48.3).
As we noted in our recent whitepaper, many large companies viewed these disclosures as “table stakes” over the past few years, and attention has since shifted to other priorities. However, several investors—including many of our clients—are now pushing companies that rolled back disclosures to restore them going forward, and we expect this to once again become a hot topic heading into next proxy season.
What we’re reading:
- Why Companies Are No Longer Hanging On to Employees: Corporate America has ended its firing freeze. Companies scrambled for years after the pandemic to build back their workforces, learning a simple lesson along the way: Keep the workers you’ve got, because if you lose them you will have a hard time getting them back. The job market has softened in recent months, however, marking a safer environment for companies to start streamlining their workforces. (Wall Street Journal)
- Beyond the balance sheet: Human capital as an asset: Here’s a pop quiz: Where does human capital appear on the balance sheet? Go on, take your time. I’ll wait. The unfortunate reality is that human capital does not appear on the balance sheet. It appears in your profit and loss statement, and at best, it shows up as an expense line represented as a sum of your compensation and benefit costs plus the costs of your training programs. However, seasoned board members and business leaders know that human capital is indeed an asset — accounting standards notwithstanding. (WTW) and The $40 Trillion Question: Why Investors Are Finally Demanding HR Data In ESG Reports: ESG funds control more than $30 trillion in assets globally and are projected to reach $40 trillion by 2030, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Yet there’s a striking paradox: Companies can quantify their carbon emissions to the ton, but many still struggle to report workforce diversity, pay equity and safety data with similar precision. As mandatory human capital disclosure deadlines approach in 2025, this data-quality gap is no longer something organizations can afford to ignore.(Forbes)
- DEI isn’t dead, it’s just reincarnating: Since Trump and fellow opponents appropriated the catchphrase, DEI has been blamed for various tragedies, including Trump’s suggestion that it could have played a role in the mid-air collision over the Potomac river between an airliner and a military helicopter that killed 67 people in January 2025. These sorts of claims can gain traction, often because not all DEI efforts are grounded in hard evidence and impact. Making diversity in leadership tangible is complex and requires a multi-faceted approach. As such, faced with squeezed revenue growth and increasing costs, many European business leaders have been working hard to decipher what the return on investment is from every cent or penny spent on inclusion. (Financial Times)
- How Did We End Up With Performance Reviews, Anyway? Performance reviews aren’t anybody’s idea of a good time, yet they have endured for more than a century—and show no signs of going away. Over the years, the practice has evolved to fit changes in the working world, but it still faces the same essential question it did at the start: How do you balance praise and criticism so that people actually hear what you’re saying, and feel inspired to improve? (Wall Street Journal)
- Google, Microsoft, and Meta Have Stopped Publishing Workforce Diversity Data:Â Some US tech giants are abandoning their decade-long practice of publishing statistics about the gender and racial makeup of their workforce. Google, which helped pioneer the release of annual diversity, equity, and inclusion reports, has no plans to disclose the information this year, according to four employees familiar with the discussions internally. Microsoft and Meta also will not be publishing diversity reports and data this year, spokespeople for the companies confirmed… (Wired)
- Mass Layoffs Are Scary, but Probably Not a Sign of the A.I. Apocalypse: Despite fears that Amazon and other employers are already replacing workers with bots, the A.I. transition is likely to play out differently. (New York Times) and US Companies Announce Most October Job Cuts in Over 20 Years: Companies announced 153,074 job cuts last month, almost triple the number during the same month last year and driven by the technology and warehousing sectors. It’s the most for any October since 2003, when the advent of cellphones was similarly disruptive… (Bloomberg) and AI isn’t replacing jobs. AI spending is: Big spending on artificial intelligence puts pressure on jobs, as gloomy narratives about the future of work are ironically making new graduates less employable. (Fast Company)