Maintaining the stats
Second, the work does not stop once the hires are through the door. If you do not accompany diverse hiring with an inclusive culture – which means ensuring talent is recognised and promoted, and allowing people to bring their whole selves to work – you will struggle to retain people and your diversity stats will be a constant battle.
That brings me to my third point: if you get it right, it becomes self-fulfilling. Remember I said it is easier to recruit in your networks? As your firm becomes more diverse, that becomes an option again.
Your happy paraplanner has a talented uni mate who has been looking for a place where they will feel at home. Your hiring managers are themselves a diverse group of people, so the impact of biases fades.
All of this takes work, but there are countless examples that show why it’s worth it. From soap dispensers that don’t recognise darker skin tones to the infamous Bic for her, so many product failures and PR disasters could have been avoided if the right people had been in the room.
In the advice industry, where personal relationships are at the heart of the work, it is easy to see why clients might want to work with advisers who share their background or experiences. It is also clear that more diverse voices in firms’ decision-making processes would be valuable.
As the FCA points out, people from certain minority ethnic backgrounds are much less likely to have the pensions, savings and protections they need, while more than half of people with disabilities have had difficulties dealing with their providers.
Greater diversity of people and of thought has the potential to improve outcomes for a wider range of clients and take down barriers to advice.
Firms that can get it right position themselves to expand and diversify their client bases, which can only be a good thing for the future of their businesses.
Ben Goss is chief executive of Dynamic Planner
