Overview

The Fiserv Forward Together Action Plan is a multi-pronged pronged social action initiative that includes a commitment to improve diversity across all levels of the organization, including the representation of diverse associates in leadership positions, alongside complementary commitments to increase associate awareness, education, and participation in D&I programs, support Black- and minority-owned businesses and support community groups with missions focused on human rights, racial equity, and social justice.

Why This Was Chosen

Fiserv believes that a diversity of people leads to a diversity of ideas, creates opportunity for professional and personal growth, and equips our teams with the perspective needed to best serve our clients. The Multiple Pathways Initiative aligns with and supports both this belief and the objectives of the Fiserv Forward Together Action Plan. Further, MPI provides Fiserv with an opportunity to learn best practices and ideas from other BRT members who are committed to similar goals.

Implementation

The Forward Together Action Plan consists of several talent-focused action items, including the following:

Creating targeted learning and development opportunities to enhance and accelerate career growth and mobility for associates.
Evaluating a wide variety of skills as we grow our workforce, including a focus on internal mobility.
Maintaining a talent acquisition team comprised of diverse professionals and directing and the team to focus on hiring diverse individuals.
Requiring a diverse slate of candidates for all leadership positions.
Working with organizations including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), industry networks, and military and veterans’ organizations to expand and develop a diverse pipeline of candidates for roles at all levels.
Engaging in university and corporate partnerships to enhance our pipeline of digital talent.

Outcomes

Improving Diversity:

Reinforcing our commitment to a more diverse workplace through skills-based hiring and advancement practices, Fiserv brought on an industry leader to produce unbiased job descriptions and worked with them on a multi-year project to review all our job postings. We revised qualifications and criteria requirements accordingly to attract candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds.

In 2021, more than a third of our U.S. workforce was diverse in race or ethnicity. Racial and ethnic diversity within the U.S. workforce grew 2% year over year, and within our U.S. leadership, it grew 4% year over year. Women held 27% of global leadership roles. Fiserv is consistently recognized for excellence in D&I initiatives, including Forbes America’s Best Employers for Diversity, the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Equality Index Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality.

Our talent sourcing partners – ranging from colleagues and universities to national professional networking organizations, military installations, and community resource providers – are vital to our goal of maintaining a diverse workplace. Through a partnership with the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA), Fiserv hired MBA interns for the first time in 2021 and established a recurring pipeline of diverse candidate for future finance roles. We began a partnership with Step IT Up America – an organization that empowers women, minorities, and veterans – to source IT/Mainframe talent, providing program participants with an accelerated 90-day training on IT disciplines. In 2021, more than a dozen of these trainees converted to full-time hires.

D&I Programs:

To further the professional development and career growth of all associates, Fiserv offers learning focused on skills, leadership development, D&I, and more. In 2021, 30% of all learning courses taken by Fiserv associates were related to D&I.

Fiserv also supports Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), voluntary networks designed to bring together associates from all over the company who share similar backgrounds, identities, characteristics, affiliations, or life experiences, as well as those interested in supporting these communities. Designed to build trust and create allies, our ERGs model inclusive leadership and conscious inclusion. Of the eight Fiserv ERGs, all experienced year-over-year growth fueled by the launch of several new chapters.

The Leading Talent and Leading Women Programs, introduced in 2021, accelerate growth of top diverse talent through an action-learning approach. The vision of these programs is to fast-track the development of diverse talent for expanded roles.

Investing in Black- or Minority-Owned Businesses and Supporting Community Groups:

In 2020, Fiserv launched its Back2Business initiative to support minority-owned small businesses disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and systemic inequalities. Through investment, expertise, technology, and community connections, Back2Business provides resources to strengthen small businesses in targeted communities. We originally planned to commit $10 million to support these businesses, but increased our commitment to $50 million when we saw the program’s impact.

Since its inception, the Back2Business program has provided more than 1,450 grants to businesses in 12 U.S. cities and expanded internationally into the U.K.

In 2021, Fiserv supported over 75 community partners who share our commitment to inclusion and racial equity in the workplace. For example, Fiserv partnered with Howard University and Humble Ventures to sponsor an Inclusive Incubator program. Our sponsorship supported 40 entrepreneurs, who completed a six-week curriculum, including a seminar on Clover, our leading business management technology platform, and culminated with a pitch competition where four small, diverse business owners were awarded grants totaling $40,000.

Through Back2Business and these community partnerships, we invest into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in a way that builds inclusion into the very foundations of the organizations and communities with which we partner.

Success

Our participation in the Business Roundtable Multiple Pathways Initiative brought into sharp focus the many ways diverse talent can be identified and cultivated, and the importance of thinking broadly and outside of the box. MPI provides an opportunity to learn ideas and best practices from other BRT members who share our goals, helping to inform our skills-based approach for achieving greater diversity across the organization.