NCUA Still Struggling to Boost Workforce Diversity: Annual Report

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — For at least the second consecutive year, NCUA has failed to hit many of its own internal goals for workplace diversity.

According to the agency's 2014 Annual Report, released Tuesday, NCUA failed to meet all of its targets — in some cases even losing ground — for increasing the number of females, minorities and persons with disabilities at all levels of the organization, including management. That follows last year's release of the 2013 Annual Report, which revealed that NCUA failed to meet 60% of its diversity goals for the year.

Females represented 45.8% of NCUA's staff in 2010, a number that gradually dipped to 43.7% by 2013. Its target for 2014 was growth of two percentage points, though the report shows an end result of only 44.2% female representation at the regulator.

The agency saw a steady increase in the number of persons with disabilities it employed in recent years, rising from 6.7% in 2009 to 9.3% in 2013. The 2014 goal was a one percentage point increase, though the end result was essentially flat — a 10 basis point drop to 9.2%.

Hispanic representation was also essentially unchanged, declining slightly from 4.4% in 2013 to 4.3% in 2014, in spite of a goal to grow that demographic by one percentage point. Hispanics' presence at the agency has changed little since 2009, vacillating between 4.1% and 4.5% over the last few years, but never growing beyond that.

NCUA lost ground in diversity among leadership positions. The regulator set a goal of one percentage point growth for females, the disabled and minority representation in leadership ranks, but saw those numbers drop from 54.5% in 2013 to 52.5% for 2014. That figure has generally been on an upward trajectory since 2009, when it stood at 50.2%.

Despite those figures, NCUA was recognized as a leader in workforce diversity by Black EOE Journal, U.S. Veterans Magazine and Professional Women's Magazine, and received other awards for its diversity efforts as well.

Earlier this year the agency patted itself on the back for increasing its total dollars awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses by 49% during 2014, though the regulator saw a reduction in workforce diversity during that time, with minorities representing only 26.3% of its workforce, compared to 26.8% in 2013. The number of minorities employed by the regulator has increased by just 1.1 percentage points since 2011.

NCUA is touting a 49% increase in its total dollars awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses during 2014, but the agency's workforce diversity levels continue to decline.

Moving Forward

According to the report, NCUA has taken the following steps to change how it measures workforce diversity moving forward:

• The regulator plans to implement action items under the "Workforce Diversity" goal in its 2012-2015 Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan
• NCUA's Outreach Committee will meet to assess diversity and outreach needs and how to advance those
• Internal analyses will be conducted to identify barriers that are contributing to low participation rates of underrepresented groups in NCUA's workforce, and subsequently take steps to remove those barriers

"NCUA is committed to creating an environment that fosters a diverse, well-trained and motivated staff," the report said. "As a result, we continue to set ambitious targets to support this objective."