We know the benefits a diverse workforce and inclusive culture bring. Our industry as a whole has a long way to go to achieve better ethnic and cultural diversity and inclusion. At abrdn we’re focused on actions that are sustainable and systemic and improve outcomes for Black and ethnic minority colleagues. We’re seeing results, and we’re determined to continue to make progress.
What we’ve done in 2021-2022
Attracting, retaining and developing
We use inclusive recruitment practices, including a diverse interview pool, and augmented software to make language in job adverts more inclusive – so that they’re more easily understood by people whose first language isn’t English. And we partner with organisations to reach ethnic minority candidates who might not have been attracted to work in asset management – including #10,000BlackInterns, Black Professionals Scotland, Catalyst After Schools Program and SEO London – Her Capital.
Data insight
We believe transparency helps drive progress in our industry. We’ve shared our first target to increase representation of ethnic minority colleagues, and in 2021 we published our EEO-1 data in the US for the first time. We’ll set more targets when we have built more data. We’ve also committed to improving our data on the proportion of businesses in our supply chain that are owned by minority groups – to gain a better understanding of diversity levels within our supply base.
Understanding issues
Through workshops we’ve trained colleagues to work effectively and build teams across different cultures, as well as raising awareness and celebrating ethnicity and multiculturalism through events and initiatives. Our executive leadership team has also taken part in six-month reverse mentoring programmes with ethnic minority colleagues, and reverse mentoring is now expanded across multiple diversity characteristics to our wider leadership teams.
Supporting colleagues
We have safe spaces for colleagues to connect and learn - through our ethnicity and multicultural network Unity, ethnicity-related learning and development, and our ‘Talk about race’ discussions and self-reflection guide.