DIVERSITY

This year, diversity is on everyone’s mind – everywhere from the city streets to the corporate boardrooms to late-night TV shows. Outraged by racial injustices, social justice groups and others have been speaking out in cities across the country and advocating for systemic changes across societal institutions to foster inclusion based on better representation of historically underrepresented races, ages, genders, religious backgrounds, and ethnic groups. What were once one-off offerings and weekend workshops, diversity and inclusion programs are now more likely to be the norm, which is making a lot of employees happy – as this year’s data on mortgage workplaces suggests.

First, there’s the gender gap issue. Among of winners the problem doesn’t really exist. While there tend to be a balanced distribution of male and female workers at small- and mid-size companies, at the larger companies there’s a greater representation of females than males.

Meanwhile, small and large company winners are actively developing their future workforces with programs geared to recruiting and retaining the next generation of workers. At some workplaces, no experience is necessary. “We have a Top Gun program: an elite six-week class that trains individuals with no lending experience to become full time account executives,” says one employee.

Of course with the average age of a loan officer in their 50s, the older demographic remains important. In our data, we found that at the smaller companies about half have programs tailored to recruiting and retaining older employees, while the mid- and large-size companies have considerably less. Still, many find nothing beats experience. “Several of our positions require experienced professionals,” says one employee. “When we cannot promote from within, we are looking for candidates with a strong background in our industry.”

Then there are those programs targeting women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups. The smaller companies appear to be concentrating more on these efforts, and many have made great strides. “Women make up 59% of all employees with many holding C-level positions, 45% of all employees are minorities and 36% are millennials,” says one employee of their company.