Dow Jones CEO addresses diversity, equality steps

Dow Jones & Co. CEO William Lewis sent the following email to the staff on Thursday:

Dear Colleague,

Last month, I let you know that we would be conducting a thorough analysis of our hiring, development and compensation programs at Dow Jones.

While it will take a bit longer to complete this analysis, I would like to share with you today some of the actions we have already taken to ensure we are fostering a true culture of equality and diversity:

• Open Roles: Led by Chief People Officer, Mark Musgrave, our recruitment and business partner teams have reviewed all current job openings to ensure we have a more diverse candidate pool. Additionally, we have already added extra steps to our offer review process to ensure any external job offers are equitable from a diversity standpoint. This process will also extend to internal promotions.
• Current Employees: We are comparing the pay of men and women throughout the organization to investigate and understand any pay gaps that may exist. We will also analyze data on our minority population to investigate any pay and staffing gaps. Please note that this part of the review, regarding our different ethnic groups, will be primarily a U.S. exercise at this stage as we have limited diversity data outside the U.S. due to a variety of regulations and privacy laws that govern non-US employees.
• External Review: An outside consultancy, Willis Towers Watson, will assess our internal review and ensure the research is comprehensive. Their work begins this week and will conclude in June.
• Working Group: We will create a cross-functional working group to ensure we are promoting these efforts across the company. We will ask for nominations from business areas and the list of potential group members will be reviewed by the Executive Leadership Team.

The actions above are just the beginning. This important work will take time and effort but my leadership team and I are committed to providing a fair and transparent workplace for all employees today and in the years ahead. Achieving this will require constant awareness and improvement, as well as open dialogue.

I will keep you informed as we make further progress. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me directly with any feedback you may have.