Top 3 reasons why Marketing and HR should join forces to build a diverse talent pipeline

Many financial services and FinTech firms recognise the need to create a diverse and inclusive culture. But when it comes to Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), so often we hear the question “where do we start?”

This is exactly what our 5 part FinTech B2B Marketing webinar series, specially tailored for marketers, tackled and addressed questions like:

• Why is a diverse and inclusive culture important?

• How does D&I impact my company’s brand and bottom line?

• How can we build D&I into our marketing strategy?

• How can we address the ‘S’ in ESG, and leverage data to understand how to measure performance?

• Why should Marketing and HR join forces to champion D&I in the workplace?

For the fifth and final episode of the series we looked at the relationship between marketing and HR when it comes to D&I.  I was joined by leading D&I and marketing industry experts from the financial services and tech space including:

• Anoosha Livani – Advisory Board Member, FinTech B2B Marketing

• Devonne Spence – Global Head of PR, Soldo

• Nadia Edwards-Dashti – Co- Founder, Harrington Starr Group

• Liz Willette – HR, PerformLine

Here are some ofthe key findings from the discussion:

1.The need for organisations to practise what they preach

The partnership between marketing and HR seems inherent: Marketers are often one ofthe faces of the organization, the brand advocates, and play a key role in how to position externally. HR, our peers ensure that collaboration works from an internal and customers’ perspective: who are the employees. Is there actual collaboration between these departments taking place? Is your marketing department accurately reflecting the hiring and management practices of a company or are they guilty of performative marketing?

It’s important that you can show that the company doesn’t just talk-the-talk but walks-the-walk as well. Being, for example, unbiased and non-racist and passively supporting these efforts is not enough. We need active measures to dismantle systemic issues. A good analogy would be of a dirty carpet: the carpet doesn’t stop being dirty just because you stopped dropping food on it. Creating quality is like keeping clean: it’s always a work in progress. It takes active work to continually focus on it to drive that change.

2.The role of D&I champions in the workplace

FinTech companies are growing so quickly that there isn’t time for them to implement a D&Istrategy because it’s not yet part of their DNA. These organisations should consider hiring a D&Iexpert if there isn’t theexpertise within the organization. It need not be expensive. Focus your recruitmentactivities beyond hiring people: focus on what you’re trying to do to retain and attract a diverse set of people within your organization. And make sure that when they arrive in your organization, that you’ve set up the procedures and the culture for them to be successful. Really what you need are strong allies within HR to slow the process down and try and implement some D&Iwherever possible.

3.The importance of D&I in maintaining a healthy talent pool, retention of staff and recruitment pipeline

The FinTech sector is very similar to what we’ve had in banking over the last 10 years: a reasonably good,sometimes 50/50 gender split within the organization. But when you move up to D and MD level, the racial diversity practically disappears.

The FinTech industry in particular has a gender diversity problem, which is something that has been talked about for a number of years. Although these percentages can vary from different researchers, the bottom line is, from aD&Iperspective, FinTechs need a lot of attention, especially in the technology sector.

Balanced and diverse teams have consistently proven through various research studies to be better at problem identification, are more accountable, challenge each other more, and there are examples of how a lack of diversity has caused issues in other marketplaces. There’s a ton of evidence that shows that if we want to serve our clients, we need to have very diverse teams across the board to reflect that client base – which ultimately impacts the company’s bottom line.

Read/Listen further

For more listen to the full Podcast: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/18610/490590?utm_source=FintechMarketing&utm_medium=brighttalk&utm_campaign=490590

Theses world-class insights and data points gathered from this 5-part webinars will feed into creating a 5-STEPS D&I GUIDE FOR FINTECH MARKETERS (a white paper report). Which will be an essential tool for Financial Services and FinTech marketers to use and help drive the D&I agenda in their respective businesses. Watch this space for more!