U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission working on "human capital" disclosure requirements

The SEC under the Biden administration has clearly signaled to investors and companies that ESG metrics will be a key area of focus - but most of its public statements and actions to date have focused more on climate risk ("E") compared to social and governance ("S" and "G") issues. That looks likely to change given Chairman Gensler's latest remarks indicating that the agency will propose new rules on "human capital" disclosures relating to companies' workforces - including, potentially, statistics on workforce diversity, part-time versus full-time workers, and employee turnover. It remains to be seen to what extent the SEC's proposal will build on or deviate from the approach taken by NASDAQ in its 2020 proposal for new listing rules dealing with board diversity and reporting on diversity statistics.