Financial services workplace discrimination alive and well

Discrimination in the workplace continues to thrive in financial services, according to a new report.

The report from HR consultancy O.C.Tanner showed that the financial services market clearly has a lot of work to do.

Over 4 in 10 of financial services professionals surveyed for a new global report had witnessed obvious discrimination at work, with a further 38% having seen unintentional discrimination.

Over a third of financial services professionals have left excluded from promotional opportunities.

Just over half said they felt their opinions are fairly represented within their organisation’s leadership team.

Whilst workplace discrimination continues to thrive in financial services, there will continue to be barriers for women and minorities looking to build careers in this space.

Many companies are making high profile efforts to improve their workplace culture and launching inclusion programmes. The FCA is also looking to tackle the lack of diversity in UK financial services.

However, the sad reality is that the leadership teams within a lot of financial services firms are dominated by older white males.

Hopefully with all the inclusion efforts being made at many firms this will begin to change over the next decade with leadership teams becoming more representative of the wider UK population.

O.C. Tanner’s 2022 Global Culture Report surveyed 1,098 financial services employees and leaders for their multiple industry global company culture survey.