WASHINGTON—The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering asking public companies to disclose more information about their workforces.

“Investors want to better understand one of the most critical assets of a company: its people,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said earlier this week in a Twitter thread. “I’ve asked staff to propose recommendations for the Commission’s consideration on human capital disclosure.”

Mr. Gensler previously said the disclosures would likely be mandatory for public companies and could touch on a number of metrics, including turnover, skills and development training, compensation, benefits, workforce demographics including diversity, and health and safety.

The SEC included human-capital disclosures on a list of potential rule-making items it published on June 11.

Large companies have already been moving to provide more information about diversity in their workforces, a Wall Street Journal analysis found in March.

The trend has been driven partly by demand from investors following 2020 protests over racial inequity and partly by changes under way at the SEC.

In an August 2020 update to corporate-disclosure rules, the SEC encouraged public companies to include a description of their human-capital resources “to the extent such disclosures would be material to an understanding of the registrant’s business.”

That guidance was in line with recommendations from business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But it didn’t require the level of detail that the SEC’s two Democratic commissioners at the time had called for. Democratic commissioner Caroline Crenshaw said the language was too “generic and vague” to produce useful information for investors and said the SEC should ask for more specific disclosures.

Mr. Gensler’s confirmation as chairman in April gave Democrats a 3-2 majority on the commission.

Earlier this month, the SEC also approved a proposed rule change by Nasdaq Inc. that would require companies listed on the exchange to meet certain minimum targets for the gender and ethnic diversity of their boards or explain in writing why they aren’t doing so.

Write to Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com