BER20: Diversity and inclusion
Deutsche Bank
This blog post was produced for inclusion in the Birmingham Economic Review for 2020.
The annual Birmingham Economic Review is produced by the University of Birmingham’s City-REDI and the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, with contributions from the West Midlands Growth Company. It is an in-depth exploration of the economy of England’s second city and a high-quality resource for informing research, policy and investment decisions.
This post is featured in Chapter 3 of the Birmingham Economic Review for 2020, on Labour Market Challenges Pre- and Post- Pandemic.
Click here to read the Review.
The recent acts of racism in the US, and the public response that followed around the world, are having a profound impact on black colleagues and have served as a call to action for all within Deutsche Bank (DB).
As a global company, DB has a workforce that includes 140 nationalities, a multitude of ethnicities and cultures, transcends age brackets, sexual identities and embraces diverse heritages that all enrich our working environment. Wherever we operate, we promote diversity and inclusion and manage corporate social responsibility initiatives that rely on early intervention to prevent marginalization, advance social cohesion and remove barriers to success for individuals and communities. DB further encourages employees to take an active role as a community volunteer, mentor or coach.
Since July, the DB Birmingham leadership team has hosted people engagement sessions opening up the discussion on racism. The sessions were incredibly engaging, conversations were rich, honest, open and allowed us to share experiences between our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) colleagues and their allies, so that we can all better understand the challenges encountered. Based on feedback from these sessions, the Birmingham Leadership team have developed location specific anti-racism commitments, complimenting wider commitments across the organisation. These commitments aim to drive a sustainable culture of equality, diversity and inclusion, and include, but are not limited to: continuing people engagement sessions, focussed diversity management training facilitated by more BAME trainers, implementing ethnicity reporting to track progress, and increasing membership of dbENRICH, DB’s own Employee Resource Group which supports ethnic minority employees.
In the UK, our pioneering Pathways to Banking and Finance Programme seeks to improve social mobility in the industry by increasing access and raising the aspirations of high-achieving students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. In 2019, 68% of the programme’s beneficiaries identified as BAME. Another project that aims to help raise awareness of the careers that are attainable is Student to STEMette. This mentoring initiative co-created by DB, pairs female students with mentors to inspire more young women – among them 70% BAME – to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. DB Birmingham has actively taken part and hosted numerous students from local schools to visit our building to find out how an investment bank operates and the different types of roles available.
DB Birmingham is committed to being part of the change.
Nutan Korpal
Head of Compliance Birmingham and co-sponsor of dbENRICH Birmingham
