Comment: Banks need to own up about diversity

Last month, Citigroup ran a seminar called "Making diversity part of the DNA" and another designed to "Celebrate our diversity", while Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) won an award for being the most female-friendly company in the City of London.

Opinions differ about how much of this is desirable, or whether it has much practical effect. Either way, with all that zealous activity going on you would think the banks would publish figures to show how diverse their staff are. Do they employ more women and ethnic minority staff than they did five or 10 years ago? What do the past year's hiring figures show?

However, the banks are silent. Not a single large investment bank discloses how many women or ethnic minority staff it appoints, retains or promotes. Asked why not, CSFB, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and others simply repeat a mantra that it is not their policy to give out the figures. Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank failed to return calls on the subject.

Last year, Goldman said 12% of its managing directors were women - but since its annual report lists their names, anyone could work that out for themselves.

This policy of silence is disingenuous. It is rather like a police force promising to catch more criminals while refusing to say how many it arrests at the moment, so that the public can judge how well it is doing. Or a hospital pledging to reduce surgical deaths, while concealing how many people are dying now.

Without publication of the figures, it is impossible for anyone to ascertain the effect that diversity initiatives are having, in which direction they should be targeted, or whether banks should have such things in the first place.

It would be easy to publish some figures on gender. Shell, the oil company, is one employer that does. Its 2002 annual report said 10.4% of management positions were held by women, up from 7.4% in 1998, when it first published records. In supervisory/professional jobs, the figure has risen to 18.9%. If an oil company can publish figures, so can a bank. Figures on ethnicity are harder to compile and some people may find it offensive for an employer to try. However, the UK government publishes the ethnic mix of the nation, based on citizens defining their own identity in a census. A bank could do the same. (For the record, the male/female staff ratio in the editorial department at Financial News is 48.6/51.4)

Off the record, human resources managers say banks do not publish figures because they would look awful. Banks remain largely the preserve of white males, although the numbers of East and South Asians must surely be increasing fast. They also fear they would come under pressure to meet informal quotas every year.

Maybe they would. However, failing to publish the figures looks even worse. The first bank that steps out of line and does so would receive more favourable publicity than bad. It would win plaudits for telling the truth. It would also be forced to take its own rhetoric about diversity more seriously.

At a seminar in London last month, human resources staff of several investment banks complained that middle managers obstruct their efforts to promote diversity. One said women returning from maternity leave routinely have requests to work flexibly turned down without good reason.

The banks are probably more comfortable places than they used to be for people other than white males to work in. The endless diversity initiatives might well have something to do with that, even if they irritate people with twaddle about celebrating diversity. However, the banks really should publish those figures.