Chief Chat: Goldman Sachs’s head of HR Jacqueline Arthur

Jacqueline Arthur took over as Goldman Sachs’s global head of human capital management in January. Arthur, who has been with the bank for 16 years, told HR Brew she has been approaching her role through a “business lens,” with a focus on maintaining a “market-leading position” when it comes to talent.

She discussed her priorities as Goldman Sachs’s people leader, including supporting employees through benefits, as well as working to diversify the firm, which has set “aspirational goals” for representation of women and minorities. Arthur also spoke about the impact of recent layoffs at the firm.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Goldman was one of the first big banks to require employees to return to the office, in 2021. How has that been received and why, from the firm’s perspective, is it important to have employees in the office?

When I look at it, working collaboratively and together is core to our apprenticeship culture and the client-centricity of our business. And what’s been clear through the journey we’ve been on is that we’re better together than apart.

From a sentiment perspective, it’s been really positively received, particularly with our junior population, in terms of experiencing our programs and office, and getting to learn from people in person.

Do you see Goldman’s full-time in-office policy affecting competition for talent?

We have not seen that come through in our data. When we look at our data, we’re most focused on career development, because that’s the most typical reason that we see people leaving, not flexibility.

Are there learning and development opportunities or courses that Goldman offers employees, with a focus on getting them prepared to move into other roles at the company?

One of the examples I would highlight is we have a program for our associate-level women called our Women’s Career Strategies Initiative. That provides them five months of developmental programming and networking opportunities, as well as sponsorship within the firm at what we view to be a pivotal moment as they’re approaching their transition to become vice presidents.

Women still face challenges reaching the very top echelons of organizations, including finance firms. Is Goldman doing anything in particular to boost diversity at the partner level?

It begins with hiring the most diverse population you can, and then focusing on retaining and developing those people.

Our recent partner and managing director classes had the highest representation of women in the history of the firm, which was great to see. At the junior level, we’ve made tremendous progress and are on target around all of our diversity goals. As we focus on continuing to move the needle, what we’re focused on is [that] these retentive efforts, whether it’s mobility or specific programming, are targeted towards providing additional tools and support for the professionals to help them advance in their careers.

Earlier this year, Goldman laid off workers. How does your office think about maintaining morale among remaining employees as those difficult decisions are made?

A big part of this is around communication to our people. Being clear on our strategy and trying to provide transparency on the market environment that we’re operating in and the actions we’re taking.

We’ve been focused on right-sizing the firm, for the opportunity set. From an employee perspective, we’re also very focused on culture more broadly.

We’ve been holding sessions across our broader population to really focus on what differentiates us from a cultural perspective…which I think has been helpful for morale perspectives, in terms of reminding people what they hold dear and value about being employees here.

Correction 08/10/23: This piece has been edited to correct the description of Goldman Sachs’s Women’s Career Strategies Initiative.