Google is planning to spend $150 million to promote diversity among workplaces, including its own, in the IT industry. Along with this new initiative, the company has recently adopted a ‘holistic’ strategy to increase diversity, which focuses on promotions, compensation and performance-evaluation programs along with providing computer science education to students, Google’s VP of people operating Nancy Lee told USA Today.
Efforts will take time for “noticeable” impact
According to Lee, the company’s efforts are aimed at building “an environment of fairness and inclusion where people can bring their whole selves to work.” Under the diversity initiative, Google has broadened its criteria for hiring new employees, and is developing ways to encourage recruitment of women and minorities. According to data, the company increased the percentage of female employees to 22% in 2014 compared to 14% in 2010. Moreover, in an attempt to recruit more diverse employees, the search provider started employing students from more than 200 schools.
Regarding the efforts, Lee claimed that it might take a while for the company’s strategy to have any noticeable effects, but such an effort is essential considering “there is not enough talent entering into our industry.”
Other initiatives from Google
The tech industry has for a long time largely ignored the subject of diversity, and did not reveal demographics about of its workforce. Lately, however, the trend changed, and Google has been publicly releasing reports on the demographics of its workers. In 2014, the majority of the employees in the company were men, while Latinos and African Americans accounted for 3% and 2% of the total workforce, respectively.
To improve this situation, the company initiated several diversity campaigns starting in 2013. Since then, the search provider has taken numerous steps to focus on making its workplace and others in the IT industry more diverse. In 2014, the company spent $115 million on such programs. Moreover, another project by the company termed ‘Diversity Core’ encourages Google employees to devote 20% of their working time to diversity programs. In addition, more than 500 workers are expected to join other projects operating inside Google and nearby communities this year. Furthermore, in 2014, Google started its Made with Code campaign to influence young women to learn how to code. The search giant has also joined hands with Hollywood to change society’s views about computer scientists.
Moreover, recently Apple decided to donate $50 million to several NGOs, including the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Facebook has also spent a good bit of money on diversity-related projects.
