Citi sets new diversity goals for recruitment, retention

Citigroup, which has been striving to hire and retain more women and Black employees, is setting another round of goals to boost diversity across its global workforce.

The New York megabank on Tuesday announced several new and expanded targets to increase its firmwide representation across various segments, including Hispanics in the United States, Black and Asian employees in the United Kingdom and the global LGBTQ+ community. Like an earlier diversity initiative, Citi has set a three-year timeline to achieve its goals, ending in 2025.

"I'm hopeful that the new goals send a signal that … we want this diverse group of people to be here," Erika Irish Brown, Citi's chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and global head of talent, said in an interview. "I think there's a positive message in terms of what it implies to those who may not think banking is a career for them, or that firms like Citi want people like them."

Bloomberg

The effort builds on work that Citi undertook nearly four years ago when it set out to increase the number of women and Black employees in leadership positions as part of its pay equity review. Citi's head of human resources, Sara Wechter, shared the initial goals in a 2019 blog post.

Over a three-year period, Wechter wrote, Citi aimed to have women fill at least 40% of the seats globally at the "assistant vice president" through "managing director" levels, and to have Black employees fill at least 8% of those same roles in the United States.

By the end of 2021, Citi had achieved, and exceeded, its initial goals, Wechter said in February. 

The latest slate of goals is broader and more inclusive. For instance, Citi aims to boost the percentage of Hispanics filling project management to managerial roles in the U.S. to 16% by 2025, and to make sure that 11% of those same jobs in the United Kingdom are filled by employees who identify as Asian, 3% by those who are Black and 3% by those who identify as "mixed ethnicity or other."

Citi is also now focusing on Brazil, hoping to lift the representation of those who are Black or have mixed ethnic ancestries who are working as project managers all the way up to managing directors. Citi said it aspires to reach 10% representation from those groups by 2025.

In addition, Citi said that it plans to ensure that at least 3.5% of all new hires from colleges and universities across the world are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Currently, the percentage of Citi hires directly out of college who are LGBTQ+ members is 2.1%, the bank said.

The goal makes Citi the first major Wall Street bank to set a hiring goal for the LGBTQ+ community, Irish Brown said.

Meanwhile, the bank will keep working to hire more women into leadership roles — it now aims to have women fill 43.5% of those positions firm-wide in three years. And it has expanded its initiative to hire more Black leaders, setting a new goal of 11.5% representation in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada by the end of 2025.

Historically, banking has not been a diverse industry, especially when it comes to managerial and executive positions. According to a February 2020 report by the House Financial Services Committee, women held 29% of the executive and senior-level workforce at the nation's 44 largest banks, while men held the remaining 71%. Racial and ethnic minorities held just 19% of those jobs, according to a survey of banks with $50 billion or more of assets. 

There has been a business case made for being more inclusive, in part because of evidence suggesting it can lead to higher profitability. A 2020 report by the consulting firm McKinsey showed that companies with a high degree of gender diversity on their executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability compared with firms that had less gender diversity. Meanwhile, those with more ethnic diversity were 36% more likely to financially outperform firms with less ethnic diversity, the report found.

At Citi, setting diversity goals provides an "accountability mechanism," said Irish Brown, who joined the $2.3 trillion-asset company in June 2021 from Goldman Sachs. 

How Citi is leading the fight to close the gender pay gap

Being transparent about the goals is also a way to show the bank's commitment, she said. 

"I think there are some people, especially in underrepresented groups, that may believe these are not diverse environments that are welcoming for people like them," Irish Brown said. "We need to show them that if they have the desire, they'll be welcomed."

"We're the world's most global bank," she added. "We should be the world's most diverse bank."