The words City bonus and public outcry go together like board of directors and male, pale and stale, but – just maybe – not for much longer.

Lehman Brothers, for example, sets aside a significant bonus pool for employees who drive diversity and inclusion at the firm.

One employee who should be in contention for one such bonus this year is Mandy Mannix, the global head of capital introductions. She has just become co-chairwoman of the European Women’s Initiatives Leading Lehman network, one of several diversity networks open to employees at the firm.

Mannix says that, having been in the industry since 1991, she has numerous examples of the challenges faced by women. However, she dismisses the idea of a glass ceiling or that the City is some kind of boys’ club.

“I’ve never believed in those,” she says. “However, individuals should consider the impact of their words or actions. For example, at a previous employer, I was the only woman in a team of four. We were putting in a new database and my boss said he’d hire a typist for the guys to put all the data in. I asked why not for me? He said: ‘You know how to type... ’ He didn’t mean it to be discriminatory. And the moment those words came out he said ‘I’ve really messed up, haven’t I?’”

It’s the kind of situation that PricewaterhouseCoopers is also trying to stamp out. It has put 200 leaders and coaches through a programme of bias-awareness training recently.

Sarah Churchman, PwC's head of diversity, says “It’s important because there’s very little blatant discrimination. What tends to happen is unconscious incompetence.

“People have preferences and therefore biases against groups or certain types of people. Once they see that, they can begin to put into place a conscious thought process that helps to minimise that bias. It comes as a shock to some people, but we all have preferences and that’s what we’re trying to make people more aware of.”

Merrill Lynch is also making strides in diversity. It has a thriving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender network and it collaborates with gay networking site Westminster Village Drinks, even to the extent of recruiting via its website. Sue Henley, Merrill’s head of diversity and inclusion, says “it reinforces the view that Merrill Lynch is somewhere you can work and be yourself.”

The firm also has a South Asian Professional Network, which recently led an industry-wide talk on Islamic banking that was attended by more than 400 people. “Merrill flew in a very experienced speaker from the Middle East, it was a huge success,” says Henley.

And if you think that there’s no business case for diversity, think again. In 1989, B&Q opened a store staffed by over50s. In 1991, it bench-marked it against four other stores. Profits were 18 per cent higher, staff turnover was six times lower, there was 39 per cent less absenteeism and 58 per cent less shrinkage.

Leon Foster-Hill, the diversity advisor at B&Q says: “Any organisation needs to reflect its customers. We have to encompass every strand of diversity, because that’s what our customers do – whether male, female, old, young, white, Asian, gay or straight– they’ll all come into our stores.”

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