Human Resource Disclosures in Corporate Annual Reports of Insurance Companies: A Case of Developing Country

Abstract

Employees are key stakeholders for companies to maintain their sustainability. Obtaining and disclosing information related to employees can help companies to manage and evaluate the effectiveness of human resources. This paper investigates human resource disclosures in corporate annual reports of 54 insurance companies in Turkey and identifies the determinants of the disclosure for the period of 2007–2017. For this purpose, human resource disclosures with eight subdimensions as employee health and safety, employment of minorities or women, disabled employee, employee training, employee assistance and benefits, employee remuneration, employee profiles and employee morale were obtained from corporate annual reports by content analysis. The data were statistically tested with correlation analysis and a pooled OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) models to determine the effects of return on assets, return on equity, leverage, firm size, number of employees, age of firm, public listing status, foreign ownership, company type on these disclosures. The results indicate that number of employees, foreign ownership and company type have an effect on the extent of human resource disclosure. Employee training is the most disclosed item among human resource disclosures in corporate reports. It is suggested that companies should improve their reporting and disclosure practices related to human resource development.