If firms want to get serious about being a more diverse and inclusive place to work, they need to start treating diversity like they would any other business priority.
That was the key recommendation from Anne Robinson, managing director and general counsel at Vanguard's legal and compliance division, who spoke Tuesday at a diversity summit hosted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc.
Though the industry has made strides in hiring more women and people of color,
there is still work to do. Finra CEO Robert Cook said the number of women in management positions at member firms was unchanged in 2017, while the number of African-Americans in management actually decreased.
Paying lip service to improving workplace diversity is no longer an option.
(More: How to improve gender diversity in financial advice)
"Imagine a senior executive at a company who's been given a business objective saying, 'It's just too hard,' or 'Our industry is different,'" Ms. Robinson said. "It's like any other business challenge – if you approach it with dedication and intensity, you should be able to solve it."
That doesn't mean implementing diversity quotas, which Ms. Robinson said can easily lead firms afoul of employment laws. Instead, firms need to think holistically about how they find talent and what sort of culture they have to retain it.
That's where inclusion comes in. It's one thing to put a certain number of women or minorities on a board of directors; it's another to make sure those voices are heard.
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"You can have a room that's completely diverse and not have a culture, not have an environment, that empowers those perspectives to surface," Ms. Robinson said. "Giving voice to the different perspectives in the room is as important as actually having them."
So what can firms do to start moving the needle?
Ms. Robinson said there is no one-size-fits-all approach, but something she has found to be widely successful is making it easier for women to take maternity leave. If women aren't forced to choose between the jobs or their children, it can go a long way to creating an environment that helps women reach leadership positions.
(More: How to get women to feel comfortable about building wealth)
She also recommended that firms rethink their approach to constructing a board of directors. Instead of a board full of CEOs, firms can bring people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets to create a diversity of perspectives.
What firms should not do, according to Frank Dobbin, a sociology professor at Harvard University, is make existing management feel attacked. Mandatory training and bureaucratic rules can lead to a backlash against diversity initiatives.
For example, civil rights grievance procedures set up by human resources departments often lead to an employee facing retaliation.
"If you bring a discrimination complaint against your boss, the odds that you'll be in the same job in six months are very, very low," Mr. Dobbin said. "Odds that your boss will be in the same job in six months is very, very high."
Instead, firms should focus on voluntary information sessions that teach people how they can help improve diversity. The programs that work best, according to Mr. Dobbin, are special recruiting (such as outreach to historically black colleges and universities), mentoring programs and diversity taskforces that involve management.
"If you want diversity to happen, you have to make it a part of every manager's job," Mr. Dobbin said. "Not HR, not diversity training, not an outside consultant. It has to be a part of everyone's job."
If workplaces can create this inclusive culture, Ms. Robinson said it will help the firm challenge assumptions and biases it previously didn't know existed. Employees will feel like they can be themselves at work, creating an attitude that can filter down to recruiting and employee retention. This is what will eventually drive diversity throughout the industry.
