In the war for talent, financial service giant Citi's greatest weapon in the male-dominated financial sector is its ability to develop a pipeline of top employees and leaders by making it easier for women, lone parents and immigrants to succeed in the workplace.

By employing networks such as its Diversity Council, CitiWomen and CitiParents, run by staff volunteers, the largest foreign bank in Ireland seeks to ensure staff feel valued enough to remain loyal to the company. The strategy is paying off, according to Carolanne Minashi, director of talent management and diversity for 17,000 Citi employees in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

"It's not by mistake that Citi's retention rates in Ireland are better than the industry average," said Minashi, who was in Dublin recently to attend a graduation ceremony for the six-month long CitiWomen mentoring programme. The turnover rate in the industry is 27 per cent and we're lower than that." About 52 per cent of Citi's workforce in Dublin is women, and 42 per cent of the graduates hired are female, Minashi said. Women account for 30 per cent of senior management.

While the proportion of women working in Citi's Irish operations is high compared with the rest of the region that Minashi oversees, statistics show female workers in the domestic financial services industry as a whole are paid less than their male counterparts and are less likely to be represented at board level.

The Mercer Human Resource Consulting Survey, published in November, found that, at senior management and professional levels, men are paid 18 per cent and 17 per cent more than their female colleagues, respectively. Just 28 per cent of senior management roles in the sector are filled by women.

"Financial services can be a tough industry, like medicine or the law," Minashi said.

"You can keep the edge as an employer through innovation. For instance, we have a pilot programme on remote working to help improve work-life balance. That's in addition to flexible working."

CitiWomen, which is closely affiliated with Women in Banking and Finance in Britain and Ireland, enables women to participate in seminars, meet their peers in activities such as "speed networking", and develop their skills and knowledge by teaming up with senior Citi professionals through the company's mentoring programme.

Its efforts at supporting and fostering aspiring female employees helped Citi EMEA win the corporate award at the 2006 Women of the Future Awards in London.

Citi, which recently changed its name from Citigroup, also runs a network called CitiParents to facilitate mothers and fathers alike to support each other in the workplace.

The company even gives employees access to a creche near its office when childcare arrangements fall through.

"The network is about recreating the community you have at the school gate for parents in the workplace," Minashi said.

"There is parental education, sessions on teenagers, and a maternity buddy programme, where expectant mothers get matched with someone who's been through it before."

Minashi, herself a mother of four, believes the benefits of the CitiWomen and CitiParents networks are instrumental in keeping women in the workplace after they have children.

About 95 per cent of female employees return to Citi following maternity leave, she said.

Citi did consider setting up its own creche on the Dublin premises, similar to its on-site facility in Florida, but Minashi says they couldn't go ahead with it "for insurance purposes".

Citi's Dublin office in the IFSC, which provides operational support for the company's global transaction services business, also runs a diversity council to raise awareness among its 1,500 employees of the different cultures in the company.

Its workers come from 35 countries and 18 languages are spoken on site, said Minashi, who runs diversity initiatives for Citi in 51 countries.

The number of employees on the site will rise to 2,050 by year end as Citi's parent integrates Bisys, the fund administrator it recently agreed to buy for $1.47 billion (€1.1 billion).

When Citi's service centre opened 11 years ago, the company employed just 80 people in Dublin.

The Irish initiatives for Citi's multicultural workforce include a special "faith room" for staff who want to worship during the day, a "diversity day" that last year saw the publication of a cookbook with recipes from different cultures, and the celebration of national holidays.

"If you are a guest in this country, having colleagues who understand your background is very helpful," Minashi said. "When we launched the diversity council, we did diversity training so staff can better understand the people who work here or be a better team leader."

Organisations that have diversity and equality strategies in place benefit from increased productivity and reduced staff turnover, according to a study being conducted by Prof Patrick Flood of the University of Limerick, who is examining the relationship between business performance and staff management systems in 132 large Irish firms to mark the 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All.