i4cp Study Shows More Top Companies Are Examining the Business Case for Inclusion

High performance organizations are three times more likely to devote resources to analyze how an inclusive culture leads to business productivity.

Seattle, WA (March 23, 2011) - Striving for an inclusive culture is a part of most companies' people strategies, but pinning down inclusion success - and what that means to the business as a whole - continues to be a challenge. However, new research just published by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) shows that the best market performing companies are looking to make an analytical case for an inclusive business culture.

Tying inclusion success to business performance
While two-thirds of companies surveyed indicated that inclusion is a part of their people strategy, few companies are actually searching for a connection with business performance in an analytical or meaningful way.

However, i4cp research shows that higher market performers are three times more likely to devote the necessary resources to exploring the linkage between inclusion measures and the overall productivity of the enterprise. These companies are going beyond their intuition about this connection to establish an analytical case for inclusion.

Furthermore, high performance organizations are 88% more likely to attempt to quantify the effects of inclusion strategies and initiatives.

As a result, it's not surprising that 33% of higher performing companies said their employee inclusion initiatives were highly effective, compared to only 18% of low performers.

Building corporate and employer brands around an inclusive culture
High performers also understand far better than low-performing companies that inclusion is a vital part of building both their brand as an employer and, more importantly, their corporate branding overall. High-performers are far more likely than low-performers (25% compared to only 11%) to compete for employer-of-choice awards, and are also far more likely (62% compared to 54%) to include inclusion specific messaging in their overall corporate branding via their website and other public-facing materials.

More research findings, case studies and actionable strategies are available in the new i4cp report Inclusion Measurement: Policies and Practices of High Performance Organizations, available now exclusively to i4cp member companies.

About i4cp, inc.

i4cp is the fastest growing and largest corporate network focused on the practices of high-performance organizations. Through a combination of peer networking, human capital research, tools and technology, we enable high performance by:

• Revealing what high-performance organizations are doing differently
• Identifying best and next practices for all levels of management
• Providing the resources to show how workforce improvements have bottom-line impact

With more than 40 years of experience and the industry's largest team of human capital analysts, i4cp is the definitive destination for organizations seeking innovative ways to improve workforce productivity. For more information, visit http://www.i4cp.com/