Bank of America Tops 2007 Diversity List

DiversityInc.'s 2007 Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list is out and the top three spots went to AT&T (No.3), Pepsi Bottling Group (No. 2) and Bank of America (No. 1).
Although there are no companies on the list with headquarters in the Pacific Northwest, several of the companies have businesses in Washington and Oregon and employ people of color in both locations.
Kaiser Permanente, which is headquartered in Oakland, Calif., and which has been treating patients in the Pacific Northwest since the early 1940s and has medical centers and offices throughout the Portland/Vancouver region, is No. 27 on the list.
"Kaiser Permanente is much different from the average corporation; it is a true champion of diversity," notes Luke Visconti, partner and cofounder of DiversityInc, a monthly business magazine and daily Web site. "A total of 317 companies competed for a spot, a 100 percent increase in corporate participation in the Top 50 competition over the last three years."
Now in its seventh year, The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list is the largest competition of its kind. The list is determined solely from a comprehensive survey of diversity management that measures CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Corporate Communications and Supplier Diversity.
Companies on the DiversityInc Top 50 are remarkable in several ways:
The Top 50 hire 42 percent people of color; compared to the national average of 29 percent.
Although Top 50 companies employ only 5 percent of the U.S. work force, they employ 17 percent of the college-educated people of color.
Twenty-five percent of Top 50 companies' management are people of color, compared with 12 percent people of color in management nationwide.
One hundred percent of the Top 50 offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples, compared with 53 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and 74 percent of the Top 50 include gender orientation in their nondiscrimination policies, compared with only 24 percent of the Fortune 500.
Top 50 companies spend nearly 10 percent of their procurement budgets with minority- and women-owned suppliers, compared with just two percent nationally.
Ninety-six percent of the Top 50 companies link executive compensation to diversity goals, and 90 percent of Top 50 CEOs sign off on executive compensation tied to diversity, compared with 72 percent last year.
For the fourth year in a row, the DiversityInc Top 50 companies, expressed as a stock index, beat the Standard & Poor's 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq on a 10-, five- and one-year basis, documenting the connection between good diversity management, excellent corporate governance and return on equity for investors.
The Top 50 list was unveiled during a live video Web cast earlier this week. To see the Web cast and the complete list of Top 50 winners, visit www.DiversityInc.com/top50.
The top 10 companies for African Americans will be released on www.DiversityInc.com on April 9.