Integrating Top & Grassroots Actions to Drive Inclusive Culture | Best Practice by CITI
Citi is tackling gender equality holistically, with a strategic promotion of a female Top-Executive to global CEO and a female hire for another key position at the very top; further by translating their global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) mission into ‘fixing the system’ with hiring, promoting and retaining female talent in Switzerland, and with a powerful grassroots network which trains new starters and leaders on inclusive leadership skills.
This best practice was first published in the Gender Intelligence Report 2021.
At Citi, we believe in fostering a culture of inclusion. Embracing diverse teams, ideas and possibilities helps us drive growth and progress because it’s a key part of who we are and how we thrive.
We strive to treat all employees fairly and with respect and to offer them opportunities to grow and succeed. Citi’s new Chief Executive Officer, Jane Fraser, made history when she took the helm in early 2021. Not only is she Citi’s first female CEO – she is the first woman to lead a major U.S. financial institution and her career journey demonstrates our deep and extensive succession planning process. Kristine Braden, who has been running Citi’s Europe Cluster including Switzerland since early 2020, and who was presiding Advance from 2017-2019, is another milestone in this history of female Citi leaders on the rise.
Citi also welcomed a new Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, Erika Irish Brown, this year. Erika will continue driving our progress to achieve our representation goals, lead Citi’s agenda on talent and succession planning as well as leadership development while strengthening our DE&I work across Citi with new ideas and approaches to challenge us and help us grow.
Throughout 2020, we deepened our efforts around our longer-term strategies for recruiting, developing and retaining diverse talent, while rolling out leading-edge benefits such as expanding our Paid Parental Leave Policy across regions we operate in. It’s making a difference as we continue to see sustained progress against our gender goals. At the end of February 2021, we reached 24.47% females in Director & Managing Director roles: an increase of over 5 percentage points from our 19% starting point in 2017. Our goal for Directors and Managing Directors is to reach 30% females by 2025.
This progress is achieved thanks to our focus on hiring, promoting and retaining a more diverse workforce, in combination with driving an inclusive culture.
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Our leaders have clear measures to assess their accountability around our representation efforts with gender goals documented in scorecards and performance measures. Progress is tracked and monitored at the most senior levels.
Our paid parental leave policy, which we expanded in 2020, applies to every kind of family and includes a parental paid leave minimum in all the countries in which we operate. At a minimum, all Citi employees will be eligible for 16 weeks of paid maternity leave and 4 weeks of paid paternity leave. In Switzerland, our employees were already entitled to a 16-week maternity leave and 24 weeks upon completion of five years of service. Upon the introduction of the new policy around paternity leave, we have observed that it has been highly embraced by male employees: All new dads have taken advantage of this extended period of four weeks leave.
Responding to the feedback received after running an internal survey in 2020, we introduced the benefit of unpaid days and sabbatical leave. This initiative aims to provide all Swiss Citi employees with more flexibility to balance the needs of their work and personal life. As we have seen already, even though this policy was launched during the pandemic, employees embraced this benefit and started using it.
Our diversity networks – global grassroots employee-led networks – have been in existence for more than 18 years globally. The diversity networks reinforce the company’s diversity priorities and goals and serve as local branches of our Affinities groups. Affinities represent the broad-ranging demographics of our employees: Asian Heritage, Black Heritage, Citi Salutes (Military Veterans), Citi Women, Disability – Enabling Diverse Abilities, Generations, Hispanic/Latino Heritage, Multicultural, Parents and Pride (LGBTQ). Each of our nine Affinities is co-chaired by a member of our CEO’s leadership team.
Consistent with our inclusive culture, the employee network chapters are open to all Citi employees, whether or not they identify with a particular Affinity. They offer professional development, mentoring, networking and community engagement opportunities to our colleagues.
In Switzerland, our Women’s Network has evolved into the City Diversity Network (CDN) to cover a broader spectrum of themes. The CDN continues to play a key role in our Swiss franchise’s diversity agenda. In 2020 & 2021, the CDN’s activities focused on soft skills building workshops targeting our entry-level female population and on emotional intelligence for our senior leaders. With around seventy to eighty participants in the first initiative and approximately twenty senior leaders attending our emotional intelligence modules, this was a highly successful initiative. Given the positive feedback, the CDN launched a series of personal development workshops in 2021, which were offered to all our employees on a first come first served basis. Our employees embraced this initiative and the sessions were very well attended. Clearly the development aspect will remain one of our key priorities from a CDN perspective.
Our efforts are all encompassing and not just focused on gender diversity. Our Swiss network participates in cross-country events, exchanges best practices with other networks globally, and employees have the opportunity to discuss other diversity topics such as LGBTQ and race.
Lastly, the CDN has also an external focus and connects with other networks and associations in the region to discuss challenges and exchange best practices to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the community in which we operate. In this framework, Citi participated in the Human Rights Week 2020 hosted by the Equality Department of the University of Geneva.
We are committed to continuing our focus on increasing our regional representation objectives by hiring, promoting and retaining more at a Swiss local level. Based on the success in other countries, we are currently working to launch a ‘Return to Work’ program, which will enable female talent who have had a career break to apply for Private Bank Roles in Switzerland.
Citi’s ‘Return to Work’ program will be implemented in Switzerland by end of 2021 in accordance with local laws and regulations.
If you have any questions or would like an exchange on this topic, please contact Tania Remoundou at tania.remoundou@citi.com
This Best Practice was first published in the Gender Intelligence Report 2021.
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