Despite the world’s biggest asset manager’s commitment in 2020 to diversify its employee ranks, retention remains one of its thorniest challenges, according to law firm Covington & Burling, which BlackRock hired to do the audit. Latinx employees at BlackRock grew their ranks just 0.5% after factoring attrition and retention numbers for this group. The challenges facing the firm are similar to the wider financial-services sector, according to the report.
BlackRock’s first racial audit did report some good news in that the firm has already reached a 2024 goal of increasing overall Black and Latinx employee numbers by 30% in the U.S. Black employees at BlackRock now comprise 7.8% of its workforce, while Latinx workers stand at 7.7%.
BlackRock still has yet to reach its 2024 goal of increasing its Black and Latinx senior leaders by two-fold, to 280. It was short of reaching that number by about 77 as of end-2022.
Over the next year about 10 racial audit reports are expected, including from State Street, McDonald’s and Apple. Others like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Google parent Alphabet have already done their respective audits.