Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) and others in the tech industry are under a consistent pressure to hire more minorities and women. Therefore, the internet giant, for the first time, has planned to soon release a document detailing its workforce diversity.
Google had been reluctant to share data
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the U.S. has made it mandatory for all the major employers in the U.S. to submit a report that compiles data relating to the numbers of people employed, who belong to various diversified sets based on certain criteria such as gender, religion etc. The employers need to submit this report to the commission only and are not required to disclose the information to public. The commission had been constantly making calls to Google for the report, but the internet company was resistant towards sharing this data, up till now.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s public policies are overseen by an African-American executive, David Drummond, who announced on Wednesday that the company will share the information requested in the next month. This announcement was made at the company’s headquarters located in Mountain View during its annual shareholders’ meeting.
“Many companies in (Silicon Valley) have been reluctant to divulge that data, including Google, and, quite frankly, we are wrong about that,” Drummond said.
Google making efforts
Rev. Jesse Jackson, who is a civil rights leader from a long time, applauded Google for its transparency in hiring and urged the company to give more employment opportunities to African-Americans, Latinos and women so that they set an example for the others in the same industry. Google has around 50,000 employees as of now and adds around thousands more people each year.
The demand for the devices and online services offered by the technology companies in the U.S. is growing day by day and therefore more and more hiring is done by these companies, which expands their payrolls, but the diversification within their workforce is not as much as the rest of the society.
Black or Latino comprises only 7% of the tech workers in Silicon Valley region as well as nationally. The tech companies employ a lot of women, but not many of them occupy technical or executive positions that are higher paying.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) has a board of directors comprising of 10 members. Of these, there is one native Indian and three women. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman at Google, also, ensured that whenever there will be an opening in the board of directors it will employ women and minority candidates.
