The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) annual conference featured a session Monday called 'Dare to be Different'. During the hour-long programme, a panel featuring diversity, equity, and inclusion experts from Goldman Sachs, Loop Capital, and Dropbox emphasised the financial and organisational advantages of increasing access and career advancement opportunities for women and minorities.
The panel agreed that: “Senior leaders who demonstrate and behave inclusively and equitably have teams that outperform others substantially [...] and employees who stay in their jobs." Further, “Diversity by itself won’t just deliver results”, arguing that well-designed and top management-supported equity and inclusion efforts have to be a part of the mix.
The five panellists shared examples of how they managed to advance their careers despite gender and racially-based challenges through the aid of internal management mentors and inclusivity programs. They trumpeted the achievements of their individual companies’ campaigns for more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) emphasis, advocating that the results they and other banking industry DEI efforts have achieved strongly favour expanding such efforts further.
Goldman representatives shared industry statistics indicating that investment firms with more diverse boards achieved 20% higher earnings per share and greater average excess returns than those with less minority and women members. With only “one in four members of the C-suite being women” and a significantly lower percentage of minority leaders and board members (according to a McKinsey study), the consequences of not aiming for and committing to hiring and promoting more women and people of colour to entry-level and senior management roles are not just financial, they said. Their presentation highlighted some of the huge gaps between opportunities available to white and male employees vs. those open to these traditionally under-represented groups.
Mentioning several specific DEI-focused initiatives undertaken by each company, they recommended combining strong financial commitments - such as targeted investment funds and grants, educational scholarships to organisations like UNCF, and special hiring efforts aimed at historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) - with carefully targeted hiring and management mentoring programs to help ensure goals are achieved. Companies need to “set audacious goals” to attract diverse talent, to help them build their careers and “keep them happy” once employed in their firms.
But, they said, efforts shouldn’t stop just with internal practices. One panellist said when her manager, a white woman, refused to take a meeting with bank providers if there were no other women on the call, she felt empowered, noting that this manager has now extended the practice to require ethnic diversity in representation as well. In fact, such demands for more diversity and inclusion from vendors should be standard procedure, the panellists agreed.
Responding to audience questions about their companies’ DEI policies and programs, panellists advocated that companies implementing similar initiatives should “go as public as you can” with the details. They also emphasised the responsibility to ‘pay it forward’ that comes with involvement in such efforts, with one stating “It’s my duty to hold that door open so others who look like me have the same access”.
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