Our mission at the Association is to grow stronger banks and stronger communities. One of the ways we do that is by providing resources to help our members and your employees institute best practices for areas like internal human resources or external communications and public relations. With this issue of Hoosier Banker, we are excited to roll out a new resource for an area where many of our members are unsure of how (or if) to start – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

This is a space that is fraught for many as it has been politicized, so it was part of our Board’s current three-year strategic plan to create a resource to help members weed through the talking points and find what it might look like in your individual institutions.

The business case cannot be denied: Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams are 39% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile; 62% of Gen Z job searchers said they were more likely to apply to a company with a stated commitment to pay equity, helping you establish the next generation of your workforce; and employees who trust that they and their colleagues will be treated fairly regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and age are 5.4 times more likely to stay with that company for a longer period of time, lowering your turnover costs.

Our new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Roadmap was designed by a committee of your fellow Indiana bankers to answer questions you may have and then, regardless of how much work you have done in this space before, help you find your on-ramp to get to where your board and executive staff decide you should go. The recommendations are based on best practices committee members learned while implementing these programs at their own institutions. Some of those committee members wrote articles in this issue, starting on page 10, with more insight into their experiences.

Click to download the Roadmap. As with all our resources, no program that is suggested in the Roadmap is required for our members to implement; we offer them for your consideration to use to whatever extent makes the most sense in your context and for your organization.