Google Publishes Less Than Stellar Workforce Diversity Stats, Admits “We’re Not Where We Want To Be”

Trying to be part of the solution versus being part of the problem, Google has started a conversation on diversity in the workplace by publishing its own lackluster workforce gender and ethnicity statistics. According to Google’s findings, female employees make up only 30 percent of the company’s overall staff. When reviewing employee ethnicity, only two […]

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google-logo-glow-featuredTrying to be part of the solution versus being part of the problem, Google has started a conversation on diversity in the workplace by publishing its own lackluster workforce gender and ethnicity statistics.

According to Google’s findings, female employees make up only 30 percent of the company’s overall staff.

When reviewing employee ethnicity, only two percent of Google employees are black, and three percent are Hispanic. At 61 percent, the majority of Google employees are white, and 30 percent are Asian.

From the announcement:

We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues. Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts.

Google Workforce Gender & Ethnicity Diversity:Google diversity report

Google’s senior vice president of people operations Lazlo Bock was featured last night on PBS NewsHour to discuss Google’s lack of diversity among employees, along with an examination of diversity trends in the tech industry.

Earlier this year, Google was called out by female advocacy group SPARK on the lack of women celebrated with Google Doodles on the site’s homepage. Since the publication of the SPARK report, Google has dramatically increased the number of women it has honored with their homepage specialty logos.

We covered both the study, and Google’s subsequent changes in the number of Google Doodles featuring women this year on our partner site at Search Engine Land:


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Amy Gesenhues
Contributor
Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.

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