Resolved clauseShareholders request Stifel Financial Corp. (Stifel) report to shareholders, at reasonable expense and excluding confidential information, on its workforce management and workplace inclusion efforts. The report, at Stifel’s discretion, could include quantitative metrics for workforce composition, talent management, and employee engagement, including data by age, disability, gender, race, ethnicity, and veteran status.
Whereas clauseStifel’s 2025 Annual Report states, “As a human capital-intensive business, our ability to attract, develop, and retain exceptional associates is critical, not only in the current competitive labor market, but also to our long-term success.” Stifel’s Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer has further said, “We know that to meet the needs of the communities we serve, we need to be in step with the values and experiences of those communities. Attracting and retaining associates from all walks of life plays a critical role in helping us achieve this goal.”1 Investors benefit from quantitative disclosures, such as workforce demographics and hiring, retention, promotion, and employee engagement metrics, in assessing the efficacy of a company’s human capitalmanagement. Stifel currently only reports the total number of employees and the total gender ratio of associates, which does not allow for meaningful analysis of its performance or trends. EEO-1 reporting would improve Stifel’s transparency on its workforce. According to PeopleReturn, as of 2025, over half of the S&P 500 and over one-third of the Russell 1000 have disclosed their EEO-1 forms. The standardized nature of EEO-1 reporting facilitates comparison across firms. As Stifel is required to report EEO-1 data to the federal government, using this format for disclosures should not cause significant additional burdens. In the Capital Markets industry, Jefferies, LPL Financial, Morgan Stanley, Janus Henderson, and T. Rowe Price have released EEO-1 data in past years, according to PeopleReturn. In addition to workforce composition, talent management and employee engagement disclosures can also offer insights into inclusion initiatives, employee satisfaction, and organizational health. Workplace culture is critical to acompany’stalent attraction andretention pipeline, which may affect bothsocialequality and financial performance.2 As You Sow and Whistle Stop Capital reviewed the workforce diversity of 1,641 companies between 2016-2021, finding statistically significant positive correlations between manager diversity and return on equity, return on invested capital, and 10-year revenue growth.3 Employee engagement, or the involvement and enthusiasm that employees feel about their work and workplace, has been linked to improved sales, customer satisfaction, and profitability, and decreased absenteeism and turnover.4 Highly engaged business units demonstrate a 23 percent increase in profitability.5 According to a Gallup survey, engagement fell in the finance sector in 2024.6 By disclosing better data, Stifel can offer assurance to stakeholders that there are no significant disparities in the experiences of employees across different demographics. Reporting better human capital management indicators would provide decision-useful insights to stakeholders and enable investors to better assess Stifel’s human capital management trends and performance.