The Bank of England has found that despite its “best efforts”, staff from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to be promoted and offered career development opportunities compared with white colleagues.
Ethnic minority employees also received smaller financial bonuses and were more likely to leave their jobs.
The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey (pictured), says he is committed to redressing racial inequality in the organisation: “The experience of colleagues with different ethnic backgrounds has not reflected the kind of institution we want to be,” said Mr Bailey. “And I, alongside my fellow Governors and Court, will lead the changes we need to make and implement the Review’s recommendations in full.”
Making the Bank “fully diverse and inclusive” is one of the organisation’s seven strategic priorities.
The findings come from the Review of Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion by the Bank’s Court.
Court Reviews at the Bank are rare and only carried out for issues of “central strategic importance”.
The Review analysed HR staff and recruitment data, staff surveys and other feedback, as well as research into initiatives carried out at other organisations.
It focused on employee life-cycle outcomes (the entire career experience of people at the Bank), lived experiences (how colleagues felt included on a day-to-day basis) and the efforts that should be made to achieve racial and ethnic inclusion.
The Bank set targets back in 2014 for minority ethnic representation at a senior level. Although minority ethnic colleagues generally felt they had been treated with respect, new targets have now been set to eliminate the attrition gap by 2025, to encourage employees to stay at the Bank and improve the relative promotion rate of minority ethnic colleagues.
Some of the ways the Bank proposes to improve ethnic and racial inclusion are set out in the report:
- Develop a centre with greater and more senior resource with appropriate experience, focus on an evidence-based approach, partnering with the business areas through a full-time D&I lead in each of the five major business areas of the Bank.
- Hold Executive Directors accountable against targets with timely and granular management information, which is linked to their reward.
- Ensure managers, in turn, are held accountable by leadership against expectations. This should be linked to their performance rating.
- Deploy a suite of mandatory inclusion training for managers, including Executive Directors and Governors, developed centrally and refreshed regularly.
- Improve the monitoring, evaluation and learning framework in place around all interventions, enabling piloting and experimentation.
- Create a new framework of oversight regularly reporting into Court on progress.
You can read the report here:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/report/2021/court-review-of-ethnic-diversity-and-inclusion
