Staff at investment banks are the most welcoming to workplace diversity, with over half saying diversity is ‘important’ to them.
City staff were asked to rate the importance of diversity from one to five, with one representing ‘not important’ and five representing ‘very important’. Astbury Marsden, the recruitment firm who conducted the research, found insurance companies (39%) to be the least convinced of the importance of diversity.
Adam Jackson, Managing Director at Astbury Marsden said “Investment banks pride themselves on being fiercely meritocratic – they will take candidates exclusively from top-performing universities and business schools, regardless of race, gender or background. The global nature of investment banking and its client base means that workplace diversity is considered a real asset. Customer experience and overall quality of work across diverse international markets is likely to suffer if the culture is too monolithic.”
Male employees displayed less concern (49%) for diversity than their female colleagues (62%), while employees working in HR and strategy were more committed to diversity, with 80% and 61% answering ‘important’ or ‘very important’, than their co-workers in sales and distribution , internal audit, and finance, where over half were ‘indifferent’ to workplace diversity.
“Firms should take the time to communicate how important diversity is to employees at all levels of an organisation- including those in areas such as finance and sales where the wider benefits may not be so obvious,” Jackson added.
