Columbus' Aflac among 'Best Companies for Diversity' for the 10th time

Oct. 16--It's been a decade of diversity for Aflac, the insurance company headquartered in Columbus and employing about 3,900 locally.

Black Enterprise Magazine recently unveiled its 2015 list of the "40 Best Companies for Diversity," with Aflac among the honored for the 10th time.

"At Aflac, we believe that maintaining a diverse workforce is the best way to succeed in a diverse marketplace," Aflac Chairman and CEO Dan Amos said in a statement from the company.

Specifically, Black Enterprise listed Aflac's diversity strengths as its employee base, senior management and board of directors. The firm's workforce demographics show it is comprised of 67 percent female employees. Minorities make up 43 percent of staffers, with 34 percent minority women. About 22 percent of the company's top management, or officers, are minorities, with 28 percent women.

Aflac has nearly 9,400 employees in the U.S. and Japan, its markets for selling supplemental health and life insurance policies that help pay for additional expenses when people are sick or injured. Of the roughly 4,800 workers in the U.S., nearly 3,900 earn a paycheck in Columbus.

Black Enterprise came up with its annual diversity list -- which it launched in 2005 -- through surveys sent to more than 1,000 large companies around the world. The firms were evaluated for overall employment of African-Americans within their organizations, from top to bottom, as well as the money they spend in support of the black and ethnic minority suppliers and vendors with which they do business.

"There is still work to do in terms of major corporations fully embracing diversity; hundreds of companies were either unresponsive or declined to participate in our survey process," the magazine noted in a release.

The magazine singled out Exelon Corp., IBM Corp., McDonald's Corp. and MGM Resorts International as showing "significant strengths" in all areas surveyed. Highlights, it said, included the fact that four companies on the list have black CEOs, while there were 59 black female senior executives among all of the firms. The 40 companies also had a collective 72 black members on their boards of directors.

Aflac, known for its whimsical duck advertising campaign, also might toast its own honor with a sip of Coke. The Georgia firms The Coca-Cola Co. and Southern Co., both based in Atlanta, are on the 2015 list as well.

The 40 Best Companies for Diversity list appears in the September of edition of Black Enterprise.

Headquartered on Wynnton Road in Columbus, Aflac is scheduled to issue its third-quarter earnings report to the public after the stock markets close on Oct. 27.

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