Google released its annual diversity report last month. And, for a global organization that has already made headlines for all the wrong reasons when it comes to diversity, the results were pretty dismal. Just 2.5% of Google’s US employees are black, yet this is the very group that exhibits the highest attrition rate. The company’s leadership is 74.5% male and 66.9% white.
We already know that diversity is a problem in the US, and for the tech industry in particular – which has the highest attrition rates in the world – and that it impacts the bottom line. Separation can cost anything from 50% of an entry-level employee’s salary to over 125% for senior or technical specialists, it’s no wonder that 78% of business leaders rank employee retention as important or urgent.
At Google, the problem is so bad that employees recently partnered with investors calling for the company to tie executive pay to diversity and inclusion metrics.
Is employee integration the problem?
Employee integration is something we’re very passionate about here at vi – as you can probably tell from all the content we write about it. But we know that it isn’t easy, and that it’s even trickier when it’s a diversity integration challenge.
Erin Meyer, author and professor at INSEAD, sums it up well in her book, The Culture Map: Decoding how People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures. She says, “Effective cross-cultural collaboration can take more time than monocultural collaboration and often needs to be managed more closely.”
Luckily, there are tools that are designed to help you create and manage a diverse workplace. Our Diversity and Inclusion platform is one of these. It plugs into your existing people management solution to help you ensure that diverse employees are properly integrating into your organization’s environment and getting set up for success. It’s got some great visual tools to help ensure your diverse population is retained and thriving.
The platform was created to help you answer key diversity questions: Are women getting promotions at your organization at the same rate as men? Are visible minorities getting the same quality of work as non-visible minorities? Are your attrition rates higher for diverse people in certain offices or departments?
We would love to show you the platform – get in touch if you want to book a demo.