Google Makes Slow Progress in Diversifying Its Workforce
June 30 2016 - 7:24PM
Dow Jones News
By Jack Nicas
Google made slow progress last year in its mission to diversify
its workforce, which is largely made up of white and Asian men.
The Alphabet Inc. unit said Thursday that it hired more black,
Hispanic and female workers in 2015, but not enough to do more than
barely budge those employees' share of Google's ranks.
Women made up 31% of Google's more than 60,000 employees last
year, up from 30% the year before. However, the percentage of
workers in these racial groups didn't move: blacks, 2%; Hispanic,
3%; biracial, 3%. Asians rose 1 percentage point to 32% of workers,
while whites fell a point to 59%.
"We saw encouraging signs of progress in 2015, but we're still
far from where we need to be," Nancy Lee, Google's vice president
of people operations, said in a blog post.
Google first disclosed the racial makeup of its staff in 2014,
helping start a conversation about the predominantly white, male
composition of Silicon Valley. Many tech firms followed with
similar reports, including Facebook Inc. and Intel Inc. Yet the new
transparency hasn't resulted in significant changes in Silicon
Valley.
Google has committed itself to adding more minority and female
workers, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on diversity
initiatives. But Google executives have said its progress has been
slow, in part because it has hired from a narrow selection of
universities, and women and minorities earn a small percentage of
computer-science degrees.
The company did make some progress in 2015. Women held 24% of
leadership roles last year, up from 22% in 2014. The share of
Hispanics in technical roles -- considered the hardest for women
and underrepresented minorities to break into -- rose a percentage
point to 3%. And black, Hispanic and female workers made up larger
shares of new hires than their current representations at the
company.
The makeup of Google's and other tech firms' staff are far from
the national averages on race, generally including more Asians and
fewer black and Hispanic employees. Roughly 64% of U.S. residents
are white, 17.5% are Hispanic, 13% are black, 5.6% are Asian and 3%
are biracial, according to census data.
Google says it is pushing other initiatives to help create an
inclusive workplace. The company said women became more likely to
nominate themselves for promotions after the company emailed
findings to employees that women were less likely to do so. And
more than 65% of its employees have completed training on
eliminating unconscious biases, the company said.
Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 30, 2016 20:09 ET (00:09 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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