Pub. 13 2018-2019 Issue 6

NEBRASKA BANKERS ASSOCIATION 9 But the most important case for diversity is simple: Ensuring your institution’s employees and leaders reflect the communities they serve—and treating all employees equitably, making them feel included—is the right thing to do. For more information on the ideas and resources mentioned here, visit aba.com/Diversity. Contact Rob Nichols at rnichols@aba.com . at aba.com/Diversity. In addition, the Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion at the eight financial regulatory agencies held a summit last fall where banks and others who are further down the path toward a model DE&I workplace shared best practices related to employment and procurement practices. The ideas exchanged ranged from participating on the boards of colleges, utilizing minority and women owned recruiting firms and offer- ing internships and mentoring to students at local low-income, minority-majority high schools. Similar suggestions were included in testimony during the first hearing, held in February, of the new House Financial Ser- vices Diversity & Inclusion subcommittee—a panel whose very existence is a testament to the social, commercial and economic importance of this issue. Carla Harris, vice chair of wealth management at Morgan Stanley and a popular speaker on issues related to diversity and inclusion, offered her own advice at ABA’s 2018 Annual Conven- tion in New York. Among her suggestions: • Most fundamentally, check your unconscious bias; we all have it, and we can all benefit from training on how to spot it. • Make sure you lead in an inclusive way, soliciting views from all and making employees feel valued, seen and heard. If your staff is not feeling this way, you’ll likely be challenged in both retaining and attracting more diverse talent. • Be fair in your distribution of assignments so everyone has a chance to grow and no one is at a deficit when the next promotional opportunity arises. • Be intentional about making sure staff have the right sponsors, who have a far greater impact on advancement than mentors. • Finally, remember the pace at which our environment and competitive landscape is changing and take a step today—even if it’s pressing pause before you fill your next job opening—toward ensuring you’ll emerge as an employer of choice tomorrow. Nothing will influence your bank’s future success more than the women and men who run it day-to-day. I would add my encouragement that you set up your own human capital dashboard. We all have a sense of where we’d like our institutions to be two, three, five years from now. But whether our goals are financial, business or diversity in nature, we won’t know how close we are to reaching them if we don’t measure our progress. 