How Diversity and Culture Impact Mercer’s Manager Ratings

30 September, 2019

Mercer believes that it should be an imperative for any business to take action to improve its diversity and create a better culture. The body of evidence-based research demonstrating the value of diversity continues to grow, and the question is no longer “why diversity?” but “how do we improve diversity and benefit from its advantages?”

Diversity comes in many forms but can be broadly grouped into two types:

Cognitive diversity, which is when teams comprise individuals who think — and approach problem-solving — in different ways; this may arise, for example, from different types of education
Identity diversity, which is how people identify themselves, such as by gender, sexuality, nationality, age, ethnicity and so forth

The two are connected — because people of different identities will often have different backgrounds and experiences, which should lead them to approach problem-solving in different ways — but are not necessarily the same. We refer to both types collectively as “diversity” in this paper. Overall, we believe diversity is a crucial aspect of an investment team, underpinned by the firm culture. The figure below outlines some of the benefits of diversity.