Email to Goldman Sachs People from David Solomon, John Waldron and Stephen Scherr on Advancing Diversity and Inclusion at Goldman Sachs

The following email was sent to all Goldman Sachs people:

Advancing Diversity and Inclusion at Goldman Sachs

Diversity and inclusion is a top priority at Goldman Sachs. We know that the strength of our culture, the execution of our strategy and our relevance to our clients depend on a truly diverse workforce and inclusive work environment. It is important that all of our people feel valued, and we embrace our differences – whether race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability or whatever contributes to who we are. We are trying new approaches and working with the Global Diversity Committee (GDC) to advance specific goals and objectives.

When we unite around a common goal, we make progress together. As an example, we hired an exceptional campus analyst class this year and achieved a significant increase in the representation of women globally, black professionals in the UK and the Americas, and Hispanic/Latino professionals in the Americas. We are nearly there on the campus analyst hiring goals we established last year.

In coordination with the GDC, we are expanding our aspirational goals to include all analysts and entry-level associates hired either on campus or laterally – this group represents more than 70 percent of our annual hiring. We are aiming to achieve representation in hiring of this population of 50 percent women, 11 percent black professionals and 14 percent Hispanic/Latino professionals in the Americas, and 9 percent black professionals in the UK. These goals are anchored in the representation of qualified candidates. While they are aspirational, we have access to an incredible talent pool and believe they can be achieved. With focus and persistence, we plan to improve each year towards these goals. We are also exploring new ways to increase representation of the LGBT, disabled and veterans communities.

Experienced lateral hiring has been an important part of the firm’s growth. However, it has also been a significant contributor to the dilution of our diversity at more senior levels and we need to address this. We will expand our sources for diverse talent, including referrals from you, identify open roles and require businesses to interview two or more qualified diverse candidates for each open role.

It is important that we increase the representation of all diverse communities across seniority levels, and we are asking business unit heads to increase their focus on helping people develop their careers to their fullest potential. Specifically for 2019 managing director promotions, before the formal process is underway, we will review the potential pipeline to assess representation across all communities.

We will hold business unit heads accountable for working to ensure an inclusive environment and to progress the goals that we have described. The extent of their efforts will become an important part of what is considered as we pay and promote managers.

Later this month, the firm, along with other companies operating in the UK, will disclose information on what is referred to as the gender pay gap. These metrics are based on an average of what we pay all men and all women in the UK, regardless of role. To be clear, we pay women and men in similar roles with similar performance equally. We need to improve senior representation in order to change the results of these measures, and we are confident that the steps we’ve outlined will help us, over time, increase our representation of all diverse professionals at senior levels.

Our goal is to be the employer of choice to all. It is important for our business, our clients, our people and to us. Fundamental change takes time, but if we’re rigorous in our execution of incremental change, we will make it happen. We are committed to that.

David M. Solomon
John E. Waldron
Stephen M. Scherr