The UK’s National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) is calling for better corporate reporting on issues related to their company workforces and has urged investors to pressure firms into offering more detailed breakdowns of investment in training, turnover and other data in their annual reports.
In a 24-page report titled ‘Where is the workforce in corporate reporting?’, the NAPF says most companies fail to report on their workforce ‘in any meaningful way’ even though workers are crucial to the long-term success of a company.
‘Companies often tell us they would report on this if investors asked them to – and too few investors make that request,’ says Joanne Segars, chief executive of the NAPF, in a press release announcing the study. ‘On the other hand, investors say they would place greater emphasis on this issue if more meaningful information were available. The NAPF wants to kick-start a discussion to resolve this conundrum.’
The report notes that less than 50 percent of the companies on the FTSE 100 index disclosed their staff turnover rates last year while less than 25 percent reported on their investments in staff training and development. Fewer than one in 10 gave investors any information about the composition of the workforce. Companies that do reveal information on their workforce often have differing methodologies for collecting and reporting the data so one company can generally not be compared with another, the report adds.
‘Without such reporting, it is impossible to understand the present value of a company’s human capital, let alone begin to assess the returns on any investment in its people,’ the authors write.
The NAPF suggests companies focus workforce reporting on the stability of the workforce, including turnover rates, as well as its composition, motivation and capabilities.
