GOOG Alphabet Inc

By Jack Nicas 

Google made slow progress last year in its mission to diversify its workforce, which is largely made up of white and Asian men.

The Alphabet Inc. unit said Thursday that it hired more black, Hispanic and female workers in 2015, but not enough to do more than barely budge those employees' share of Google's ranks.

Women made up 31% of Google's more than 60,000 employees last year, up from 30% the year before. However, the percentage of workers in these racial groups didn't move: blacks, 2%; Hispanic, 3%; biracial, 3%. Asians rose 1 percentage point to 32% of workers, while whites fell a point to 59%.

"We saw encouraging signs of progress in 2015, but we're still far from where we need to be," Nancy Lee, Google's vice president of people operations, said in a blog post.

Google first disclosed the racial makeup of its staff in 2014, helping start a conversation about the predominantly white, male composition of Silicon Valley. Many tech firms followed with similar reports, including Facebook Inc. and Intel Inc. Yet the new transparency hasn't resulted in significant changes in Silicon Valley.

Google has committed itself to adding more minority and female workers, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on diversity initiatives. But Google executives have said its progress has been slow, in part because it has hired from a narrow selection of universities, and women and minorities earn a small percentage of computer-science degrees.

The company did make some progress in 2015. Women held 24% of leadership roles last year, up from 22% in 2014. The share of Hispanics in technical roles -- considered the hardest for women and underrepresented minorities to break into -- rose a percentage point to 3%. And black, Hispanic and female workers made up larger shares of new hires than their current representations at the company.

The makeup of Google's and other tech firms' staff are far from the national averages on race, generally including more Asians and fewer black and Hispanic employees. Roughly 64% of U.S. residents are white, 17.5% are Hispanic, 13% are black, 5.6% are Asian and 3% are biracial, according to census data.

Google says it is pushing other initiatives to help create an inclusive workplace. The company said women became more likely to nominate themselves for promotions after the company emailed findings to employees that women were less likely to do so. And more than 65% of its employees have completed training on eliminating unconscious biases, the company said.

Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 30, 2016 20:09 ET (00:09 GMT)

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024