Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) was asked to disclose the information on the diversity of the human resources in the company by the U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson. And within a week of receiving the call, the data was released by the social networking giant relating to the gender and ethnicity breakdown of its employees.
Twitter data in-line with Silicon Valley giants
The date released on Wednesday by Twitter, showed that U.S. employees comprised of 59% whites and 29% Asians. Merely 2% employees were black, and Hispanic and Latino employees contributed 3% to the workforce.
The breakdown revealed from the report is not very satisfactory, but as per expectations. The other tech giants of the Silicon Valley have too reported the diversity and ethnicity data recently, which include names like Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Yahoo and LinkedIn. Women and blacks form the minority in all these companies.
The Silicon Valley companies are biased towards the males and whites while hiring, this is what Jackson was concerned about. He wanted to highlight the issue so that some reforms in the hiring practices of these companies could be made with equal opportunities being granted to the females and blacks, as well. As part of the campaign started by Jackson, the companies were required to release their employee diversity data, and all this began at the annual meeting of Hewlett-Packard, in March.
Diversity helps improve outcome
Improving outcome through hiring diversified workforce has been the topic of research for some time, and this has given positive results with diversified teams having better decision making abilities. The financial results also get a boost under female leaders- the view expressed in a blog post by Twitter Inc vice-president Janet Van Huysse over the topic of diversity and inclusion. She believes that it will be beneficial for the society as well as for the company if they made their workforce much more diversified, but will require putting in a lot of hard work for achieving it.
Tech companies based in the Silicon Valley tried to defend themselves by saying that ‘Blacks’ lacked the talent and skill set required in their organizations. Google came out with data that Black and Hispanics account for less than 10% of college graduates, and each earns fewer than 10% of degrees in computer science majors.
Jackson rejected this explanation saying that not only in technical, but also non-technical roles we find similar disparity. Twitter itself is supportive of the view of ‘inclusiveness’ and for addressing the issue not only has it created few groups led by employees, but also partnered with several organizations.
