NEARLY half of senior managers don't believe their boardroom colleagues are committed to stratagies that will attract minority groups into the workforce says a new report.

Just under one in ten respondents - 9 per cent - said they did not think the board was committed to workforce diversity and a further 38 per cent said they simply did not know.

The Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) is a quarterly survey of UK directors' and managers' expectations of changes in recruitment activity and business conditions. It is produced by the Daily Telegraph and Cranfield School of Management.

Managing director of Prospus, Andrew Monaghan said he was not surprised at the apparent lack of boardroom commitment to a diversity agenda.

He said, "It reflects our experience on the ground. However, ultimately the success of diversity strategies comes back to senior level commitment because that's when things happen."

Shaun Tyson, Professor of Human Resources at Cranfield School of Management, added, "It could be that boards simply haven't realised the extent to which diversity is an issue for customers and clients," he said.

Among organisations that do take diversity seriously, profits and social responsibility appear to be the major drivers. In both cases, 55 per cent of respondents said these were pushing their organisation to attract recruits from minority groups.

The research also suggests that attracting a diverse workforce could help firms retain key skills. For example, women and ethnic minority workers appear to be among the most loyal. Only 11 per cent of managers reported having problems retaining female workers and only eight per cent had problems hanging on to the ethnic minority staff.