KPMG has release a detailed diversity profile of its staff which shows that women and BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) employees are under-represented at the top levels of the firm, which has committed to a three-year plan designed to raise levels of diversity in the four areas of gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation.
By 2018 the firm is aiming to to increase female partner share from 15% to one in four with a target of 25%, along with 36% (2014: 23%) of directors and 46% (2014: 36%) of senior managers being women.
It also wants to increase the number of black partners from 0.9% to 2.2%, while it wants to up the share of BAME representation from the current 7% to 9%.
It has also set ambitious objectives to increase BAME representation at director and senior manager level to 14% (2014: 9%) and 18% (2014: 14%) respectively.
KPMG’s results show that while the gender split is even across the firm as a whole, with women accounting for 46% of the total and men 54%, the proportion of female partners is just 15%. A third of senior managers are women (36%) but under a quarter (23%) are directors. The figure for BAME representation is 17% overall, but less than 1% of partners are black.
Earlier this year, Simon Collins, UK chairman of KPMG, criticised the white, male dominance of the accounting profession and he is committed to achieve greater diversity at the Big Four firm.
He said: ‘The diversity profile of the workforce across the professional services industry does not reflect society or our client base. We need to change and I believe a crucial part of achieving a meaningful shift is providing more transparency of the make-up of our current staff against where we would like to be.’
‘We certainly don’t underestimate the scale of the challenge we have set. For example, we need to double the number of female audit partners to hit our gender target. Our overall numbers on ethnicity are good but, for example, we know we need to do much more to support black professionals as less than 1% of our partners are black.’
Stephen Frost, head of diversity and inclusion at KPMG, said: ‘Staff profiling enables us to take a focussed approach to our recruitment, training and diversity and inclusion strategy. We have seen success this year in raising the number of women promoted to partner by adapting our partner process to support women coming through the ranks. We are now making similar changes to remove any barriers that might exist in the targeted areas our data has revealed are problematic.’
KPMG diversity survey
Grade | Current population (%) | 2018 (%) | |
Female | Partner | 15 | 25 |
Director | 23 | 36 | |
Senior managers | 36 | 46 | |
BAME (black professionals) | Partners | 7 (0.9) | 9 (2.2) |
Directors | 9 (1.2) | 14 (4.4 ) | |
Senior managers | 14 (2.0) | 18 (4.1) | |
Disability | Overall | 1.4 | 2.8 |
LGBT | Overall | 3.0 | 4.1 |
Over 93% of KPMG’s 11,500 staff provided information about diversity on a voluntary basis as part of a survey conducted in July in what the firm says is the first such exercise by a professional services firm.
