34 | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: A ROAD MAP TO GENDER EQUALITY More than 90% of companies say they prioritize gender and racial diversity because it leads to better business results, but the message is not reaching employees. Only 42% of employees think this is the case for gender diversity, and only 22% think it’s the case for racial diversity. CASE STUDY VMware: Tracking and rewarding progress What they did VMware wanted to make diversity metrics easy for senior Each senior leader’s progress is recorded on a scorecard leaders to access and to hold them accountable for and reviewed at regular intervals with the CEO’s executive improving the metrics. staff. To meet their business goals, senior leaders now VMware’s CEO gave each vice president a yearly goal of have to meet representation targets and demonstrate improving the global representation of women. To develop inclusive behavior. strategic action plans, VPs were given access to a diversity dashboard with real-time HR metrics. The dashboard Outcomes tracks representation, hiring, promotions, and retention, Since announcing these goals and unveiling the dashboard showing areas of progress in green and areas of decline in August 2017, VMware has made significant progress. Their in red. This tool helped leaders to easily see improvement global hiring rate for women is 5.6 percentage points higher areas, strategize, and track progress toward meeting their than their baseline representation, and for the past twelve representation targets. months, the company has met gender representation targets across all geographic regions.