The Belgians: improving diversity – future thoughts are missing

 By Timmy Fredriksson

The websites of the 11 largest companies in Belgium have been ranked against stakeholder demands. While they generally underperform compared to their European counterparts, progress has been made across the board. IR should remain the main focus for the Belgians, as it’s their weakest section for the 2nd year in a row, while good progress has been made when it comes to diversity information.

The average stakeholder fulfilment rate for Belgian companies has seen an increase, although not a significant one. Going from 41% to 44%, there’s still headroom for improvements. There is, in other words, a big opportunity for Belgian companies to start working with their content and stand out to the capital market and jobseekers as the most accommodating company for stakeholders.

Belgian companies need to share thoughts on the future

To reach the capital market, IR sections should provide not only breadth, but also depth, by covering many areas and including detailed information. The capital market is arguably one of the most important stakeholder groups for listed companies and their needs should be a priority. When it comes to this section, Belgian companies scored an average of 26% this year – 4% lower than last year and 3% lower than the European average.

Within this section, the lowest scores were received for megatrends, as well as financial and market outlooks. These are regarded as highly important by the capital market: 89% of the respondents from our Capital Market survey find information on market drivers important and that number increases to 97% for outlook overviews. By providing this, Belgian companies would greatly aid investors and analysts in making better decisions and would also help build long-lasting relationships with the capital market.

Out of the Belgian companies, the best in class when it comes to IR is KBC Group, with a score of 61%.

Stepping up in regards to diversity

Belgian career sections have had an unstable trajectory, with scores since 2015 varying significantly between each year. Compared to last year, 2018 has seen an increase of 4% in the average score for this section. At 35%, this is still quite low (8% below the European average), but it’s a good step in the right direction when it comes to attracting and retaining talent.

It’s clear that a focus point for the past year has been working on including more information on diversity policies and disclosing work that is being done to create an equal workplace. This year, the overall fulfilment score was 64%, going up from 36% last year. This is great news, especially since 83% of jobseekers find diversity and equal opportunities statements important.

The best Belgian company in careers is UCB, with a fulfilment score of 55%.

The top performers and fastest climbers

UCB stands firm and once again takes 3rd place with 53.8 points, a slight drop since last year.

With an increase of 5.9 points (and a total of 55 points), Ahold Delhaize climbs from 4th to 2nd place, earning them both the silver medal and the title of this year’s fastest climber.

And the winner, for the fourth time in a row, is KBC Group, going from 56.8 to 61.6 points this year.

Full ranking list

See the results from other countries