Like many Silicon Valley tech companies, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is focused on making its employee base more diverse. But how?
A recent Quartz article outlines why the tech giant is making massive changes to reach its diversity goals.
In 2015, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich spoke at the International Consumer Electronics Show and announced the company's intent to attain full market representation by 2020. This means that by 2020, the company's staff will hopefully echo market availability across various roles.
"It's time to step up and do more," Mr. Krzanich said during his keynote address. "It's not good enough to say we value diversity."
The goal is lofty for the company, where 85 percent of the 100,000 employees are in technical roles. 2015 data showed women held 22.7 percent of Intel's technical roles. Approximately 8.4 percent of Hispanics and 4.5 percent of African Americans held technical roles.
But Intel has taken on numerous initiatives to achieve its objective. It launched a "pay it forward" program, which pairs workers with mentors who help them develop leadership skills. In addition, Intel requires managers to interview a diverse selection of candidates. In 2015, the company created its Rapid Orientation for Accelerated Results program, which "brings new hires to headquarters for a week to meet with company leaders and attend workshops on career development," according to Quartz. Though it was initially only available to underrepresented employees, Intel opened its ROAR program to the entire company this year.
These steps are paying off. As Intel's Aug. 10 diversity report shows, women now hold 21 percent of technical roles and 25 percent of its employee base across the U.S. Twelve percent of its U.S. and technical employees are underrepresented minorities.
"This is a big, big culture change. It's really changing the way a company practices hiring, how they think about internal movement and development, how they think about retention," said Danielle Brown, Intel's chief diversity and inclusion officer, according to the report. "Those changes take time, and I think we're all impatient for those changes to happen quickly."