Corporate Diversity Report

Corporate Diversity Report

BMO Financial Group

Corporate Diversity Report 2011

Department of Corporate Affair

BMO Financial Group

MEMO OF TRANSMITTAL

Dear Mr. Duane Brown,

After receiving your email one week ago, which you addressed concerns towards our corporate diversity issue in BMO Financial Group, I have done an extensive research benchmarking against the rest of the corporate world and one of our close competitors, Royal Bank of Canada, which is the winner of Canada's Best Diversity Employers in 2011.

Your concerns are not unfounded and there are indeed some improvements to be done for our corporation in order to become a balanced demographic make-up of our employees in the near future. You will find several recommendations at the end of this report and I am fairly confident that you can find the related solutions towards the questions you raised in the email.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any further concerns.

Sincerely yours,

VP of Corporate Affairs

BMO Financial Group

Table of Contents

Executive Summary……………………………………………………….4

Introduction ……………………………………………………… 4

Background Information………………………………………………5

Diversity in the City of Toronto……………………………………...5

Diversity of Toronto's Corporate Environment……………..7

Diversity in BMO Financial Group & RBC………………………8

Define Corporate Glass Ceilings and Its Cause…..…………10

Barriers for Women and Visible Minorities to Senior Leadership …………………………………………………….12

Recommendations ……………………………………………………..13

Conclusion ………………………………………………………15

References ……………………………………………………...16

Executive Summary

With a population of 2.48 million people, Toronto is considered as one of the most multicultural cities in the world. There are over 140 languages spoken here; and with 47 percent of visible minority base, Toronto is also a city that has significant Pride movements in recent years.

Compared with other corporations, for example, RBC, we still need to improve our corporate diversity. In this report, reasons of unsuccessful diversity movements in BMO Financial Group are identified, such as language barriers and discourage of social networking. In the end of the report, several recommendations are mentioned for the management level, for example, shift from employee's extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation in order to encourage interactions within corporate teams.

Introduction

In the twenty-first century, diversity is more important for a healthy on-going corporation than ever before. Studies show that more and more people would like to work in a diversified workplace rather than traditional corporate culture. Issues regarding demographic diversity often cover a broad set of topics, including race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age and sexual orientation. This report will focus on the diversity BMO Financial Group compared with Diversity in both the City of Toronto as well as Royal Bank of Canada, which is the winner of Canada's Best Diversity Employers in 2011. The author will go in-depth analysis of the make-up in BMO Financial Group and therefore give several recommendations towards how BMO will become a more diversified work place within the context of Toronto.

Background Information

BMO Financial Group takes diversity as a serious business goal within our corporation. We have employees across Canada and across the world.