Last week, we published our inaugural Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) Impact Report. The report offers a look back at the origins of our ESG efforts and the transformative steps our company took in 2021 and provides a look forward at our ESG plans for 2022. The report presents our progress to date in identifying our priority topics, measuring performance, and setting ambitions. One such priority is our approach to managing People, including human capital management, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and community relations.
We emphasize integration in our approach. We assign accountability for each ESG topic to Impact Owners, who are members of executive leadership, and day-to-day responsibility to Impact Managers, who are subject-matter experts throughout the organization. I serve as Impact Owner for our ESG impacts on people, and I am thrilled to be driving Digimarc’s People strategy forward.
Every output we’ve ever produced is the direct result of our people. It’s no coincidence that People is the first pillar in our ESG Framework – while all three including Product and Planet are important, we need to recognize that first and foremost, we’re a people-business. That’s why we’re happy to say that we’ve made inroads when it comes to employee learning and development and our DEI initiatives. In 2021, nearly half of all employees participated in a training program. We also increased our board’s diversity of gender and demographic background to 38%. Along with employee engagement and development, improving the diversity of our workforce and board has been and continues to be a priority.
We are working on finalizing a strategic DEI strategy for Recruiting, Retention, L&D and reporting and measurement. We are working on a Diversity Education, Published DEI Recruiting Strategy and Building a Sustainable Culture of Difference. To support this, an extensive baselining and goal setting exercise will take place this year to work towards DEI leadership. This is an exciting time at Digimarc as we continue to put people – employees, communities, and other key stakeholders – at the center of our strategic priorities.
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