IA Foreword

Foreword

Pauline Hawkes-Bunyan,
Director, Business: Risk, Culture & Resilience, The Investment Association

The Investment Association and our members are committed to building a diverse and inclusive industry; an environment in which all individuals are empowered and enabled to thrive. It is one of the IA's key guiding values, both internally and in our support of our members.

The IA’s suite of diversity reports and pocket guides have been central to the way we actively encourage diversity and inclusion (D&I) in the investment management industry. These documents seek to stimulate important discussions, encourage firms to reflect on progress made as well as what more must be done, and provide practical examples of initiatives which have been embedded across the industry to encourage meaningful action.

These resources, as well as the IA’s wider work on D&I and culture (including our industry-leading Culture Framework) touch on a multitude of factors which go into cultivating a truly inclusive culture. From ensuring workplaces are psychologically safe and employees feel able to speak up, to assessing the impact of policies and processes on different groups.

As highlighted in our most recent publication, Ethnicity in Investment Management, underpinning all these factors is the requirement to have data on the protected characteristics of your workforce (which we refer to as ‘diversity data’). For employers to know their starting point, to set stretching targets and desired outcomes, to evaluate the success of their diversity strategy or specific initiative, or to know where the areas of underrepresentation exist, they need to understand the composition of their workforce and be able to measure the impact of any interventions implemented. Successfully collecting, storing, and analysing diversity data is therefore fundamental to driving greater D&I in the workplace, as evidenced in this guide.

Our members recognise this, as well as the importance of having this data for external purposes, including increasing requests from clients and pay gap reporting requirements. They are, however, also aware of the many challenges in successfully collecting diversity data.

At the end of 2020, the IA proactively engaged by forming the Diversity Data Working Group (DDWG). This provided members with a forum through which they could discuss difficulties faced, as well as any good practice firms had picked up on the way. It became apparent that, whilst some obstacles were unique to individual organisations, there were a number of shared issues faced across the industry, and that a practical guide to help firms to navigate and mitigate these would be of great value. We were delighted to partner with PwC to make this a reality, and I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks for all their effort and insights, as well as the invaluable input from the DDWG members.

It is our hope that this practical guide acts as a tool which enables the industry to utilise their workforces’ diversity data to drive sustainable and continued change. The IA, as an employer, will also deploy the knowledge captured to support our continued work in this space. This is, after all, not a one-off exercise, but a dynamic and continuous journey for us all.