Wells Fargo Reinstates Diverse Candidate Slate Guidelines After Comprehensive Review

Originally published at newsroom.wf.com. Wells Fargo ranked No. 29 on The Fair360, formerly DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list in 2022.

 

Wells Fargo & Company announced that it is reinstating its diverse candidate slate guidelines following a pause that started in June. Over the past six weeks, the company completed a review of diverse candidate slate hiring approaches and interviewed Wells Fargo recruiters and hiring managers to determine what’s working and what’s not. The company has also engaged a broader set of employees in listening sessions since mid-May.

“We are recommitting to our diverse candidate slate guidelines with changes that will help clarify and simplify the process and lead to a better experience for all candidates, internal and external. We began this exercise knowing that diverse candidate slates work, and that they are a common, good practice across multiple industries,” said Bei Ling, Wells Fargo Chief Human Resources Officer. “Wells Fargo has seen measurable increases in diverse representation over the past several years, and we believe that diverse candidate slate guidelines have been one of the many contributing factors. Our review helped us to identify opportunities where we can further improve how the guidelines are implemented.”

The company is resuming application of the guidelines effective Aug. 19, continuing certain aspects and changing others, including:

  • Continue to expect a 50% diverse candidate slate and a diverse interviewer panel. The company expects that the 50% will evolve as our diverse representation continues to improve.
  • Redefine roles that are in-scope for the guidelines based on job level, not compensation. This change is a more consistent way to apply the guidelines across the company.
  • Revise the existing exception approval process to provide for manager and recruiter review and approval, and ongoing monitoring.
  • Provide updated training for recruiters and managers on the diverse candidate slate guidelines, including how they should be applied throughout the recruiting and hiring process.
  • Focus our ongoing monitoring of the diverse candidate slate guidelines on the effectiveness of their contribution to our goal of increasing diverse representation.
  • Continue to hold senior leaders accountable for making progress on diverse representation.

In addition to the enhancements to these guidelines, Wells Fargo will continue its focus on the employee experience and will invest in initiatives that will help employees to better manage and grow their careers over time.

Diverse candidate slates have had a noticeable impact in helping Wells Fargo increase diverse representation. Since 2020, there have been meaningful increases in gender, racial and ethnic diversity for positions throughout the company. Specifically:

  • In 2021, Wells Fargo’s overall U.S. external hiring volume went up by 17% compared to 2020.
  • Over the same time in the U.S., external hiring of individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups increased by 27%. This means that the pace of external diverse hiring was 10 percentage points higher than the pace of hiring overall from 2020 to 2021.
  • Between 2020 and 2021, external hiring of women in the U.S. increased 23% — six percentage points higher than the pace of hiring overall.

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