Outcomes
Improving Diversity:
Reinforcing our commitment to a more diverse workplace through skills-based hiring and advancement practices, Fiserv brought on an industry leader to produce unbiased job descriptions and worked with them on a multi-year project to review all our job postings. We revised qualifications and criteria requirements accordingly to attract candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds.
In 2021, more than a third of our U.S. workforce was diverse in race or ethnicity. Racial and ethnic diversity within the U.S. workforce grew 2% year over year, and within our U.S. leadership, it grew 4% year over year. Women held 27% of global leadership roles. Fiserv is consistently recognized for excellence in D&I initiatives, including Forbes America’s Best Employers for Diversity, the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Equality Index Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality.
Our talent sourcing partners – ranging from colleagues and universities to national professional networking organizations, military installations, and community resource providers – are vital to our goal of maintaining a diverse workplace. Through a partnership with the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA), Fiserv hired MBA interns for the first time in 2021 and established a recurring pipeline of diverse candidate for future finance roles. We began a partnership with Step IT Up America – an organization that empowers women, minorities, and veterans – to source IT/Mainframe talent, providing program participants with an accelerated 90-day training on IT disciplines. In 2021, more than a dozen of these trainees converted to full-time hires.
D&I Programs:
To further the professional development and career growth of all associates, Fiserv offers learning focused on skills, leadership development, D&I, and more. In 2021, 30% of all learning courses taken by Fiserv associates were related to D&I.
Fiserv also supports Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), voluntary networks designed to bring together associates from all over the company who share similar backgrounds, identities, characteristics, affiliations, or life experiences, as well as those interested in supporting these communities. Designed to build trust and create allies, our ERGs model inclusive leadership and conscious inclusion. Of the eight Fiserv ERGs, all experienced year-over-year growth fueled by the launch of several new chapters.
The Leading Talent and Leading Women Programs, introduced in 2021, accelerate growth of top diverse talent through an action-learning approach. The vision of these programs is to fast-track the development of diverse talent for expanded roles.
Investing in Black- or Minority-Owned Businesses and Supporting Community Groups:
In 2020, Fiserv launched its Back2Business initiative to support minority-owned small businesses disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and systemic inequalities. Through investment, expertise, technology, and community connections, Back2Business provides resources to strengthen small businesses in targeted communities. We originally planned to commit $10 million to support these businesses, but increased our commitment to $50 million when we saw the program’s impact.
Since its inception, the Back2Business program has provided more than 1,450 grants to businesses in 12 U.S. cities and expanded internationally into the U.K.
In 2021, Fiserv supported over 75 community partners who share our commitment to inclusion and racial equity in the workplace. For example, Fiserv partnered with Howard University and Humble Ventures to sponsor an Inclusive Incubator program. Our sponsorship supported 40 entrepreneurs, who completed a six-week curriculum, including a seminar on Clover, our leading business management technology platform, and culminated with a pitch competition where four small, diverse business owners were awarded grants totaling $40,000.
Through Back2Business and these community partnerships, we invest into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in a way that builds inclusion into the very foundations of the organizations and communities with which we partner.