Goldman Sachs Pilots Apprenticeship Program to Boost Their Diversity

Financial services company Goldman Sachs has started an apprenticeship program on its London trading floor that will start training participants within the coming year. The program is dedicated to a new effort to boost social mobility across the financial sector. The apprenticeship comes as a result of a partnership between Queen Mary University of London and Goldman Sachs and will incorporate on-the-job training over a four-year span giving their participants valuable industry knowledge. The program comes in response to the recent agenda tasked with addressing the lack of socioeconomic diversity across both financial and professional service sectors. 

“As an industry, we are still not doing a good enough job at appealing to students from a more diverse socioeconomic background. There is of course an interplay between socio-economic background and ethnic minorities, so working to improve social mobility in our recruitment process is likely to have knock-on benefits to our racial diversity too.”

Daniel Freckleton, Managing Director in Global Markets at Goldman Sachs

Apprenticeship programs conducted in the financial sector are not anything new as a few banks have piloted programs, though many of these programs have been reserved for back-office roles. The difference between them and Goldman’s program is that Goldman’s program is thought to be one of the first in its industry to bring trainees directly to the trading floor of investment banks. The model will start in September of 2022 with the company looking to bring in around ten apprentices. Participants will start by earning a competitive wage that comes with eligible bonuses achieved through the completion of their included classroom studies. Goldman Sachs hopes this program will help to increase the diversity within their company while also helping their participants by providing them with a secondary pathway to education while also avoiding student debt. 

Read full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/12/goldman-sachs-starts-trading-floor-apprenticeship-scheme-to-boost-diversity