Tech giant Intel’s diversity report shows Silicon Valley still struggling to hire Black workers
Despite corporate efforts to shrink diversity gaps, the company still seems to fall short when it comes to Black employees
Silicon Valley tech giant Intel released its 2017 annual report on diversity last week, and while the company is reportedly ahead of is ahead of its overall workforce goals, it’s still struggling to hire, retain, and promote Black talent.
According to Fortune Magazine, African-Americans make up just 4 percent of the Intel workforce, while White workers accounted for 48 percent of Intel’s U.S. employees last year. Asian workers made up 39 percent; Latino employees were 9 percent. Only Native Americans were at a lower rate, at just 0.7 percent of the total workforce.
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Women make up just 27 percent of their U.S. workforce, which is actually an increase of 0.8 percent since 2016. These numbers are not good enough.
“If you do not intentionally include, you will unintentionally exclude,” Barabara Whye, Intel’s chief diversity and inclusion officer said.
“We set goals, we measure, we achieve our goals. Just like any other business initiative,” she said. “And we’re having these conversations with our CEO Brian Krzanich on a monthly basis, just talking about the progress.”
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The company’s plan
In 2015, the company pledged to reach full representation in its workforce by 2020 and committed $300 million toward that goal.
At the time of the pledge, Intel identified that this gap was made up of 2,300 employees. Since then it has shrunk to 376 people, and the company is on track to reach full representation by this year, two years early.
Along with the employee representation milestone, Intel is also on-track to meet their supplier diversity goal of spending $1 billion with minority- or women-owned businesses by 2020. Last year, the company spent $650 million with diverse suppliers.
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“We strive for leadership parity because if you achieve your leadership progression goals, knowing that the research supports that diverse managers actually hire diverse employees, it drives your ability to sustain the results,” Whye said. “So that’s a very important metric for us.”
