Having a diverse workforce has apparently become the norm among many tech companies these days. Digital scrapbooking site Pinterest becomes the latest to jump onto the ‘diversity in workforce’ bandwagon, officially joining hands with Paradigm to launch a new initiative called Inclusion Labs.
As a part of the initiative, Pinterest is aiming at increasing its female workforce along with the inclusion of individuals belonging to a minor community. The company essentially wants 30 percent of its engineering workforce to be females and 8 percent from other minority ethnic backgrounds. Also, it wants 12 percent of new hires for non-engineering roles from other minority communities. And finally, the company wants its managers to interview at least one woman and one person from a minority community while hiring for managerial positions, also known as the Rooney Rule.
“We’re holding ourselves accountable to make meaningful changes to how we approach diversity at Pinterest. Over time, we hope to build an industry that is truly diverse, and by extension, more inclusive, creative and effective,” Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp said in a blog post.
As of now, Pinterest’s updated diversity stats show that women make 42 percent of the workforce though is still largely dominated by whites (49%) and Asian (43%). While the company’s tech, engineering leadership positions is dominated by males.
Pinterest has joined hands with Paradigm to help them reach this goal. Paradigm essentially collects data and statistics as to how a company hires potential candidates and their methods of giving promotions and incentives. The two have been working collectively for the last seven months on parameters such as data collection, organization culture, training programs along with diversity recruitment.
Paradigm, headed by Joelle Emerson, has also held workshops for Pinterest’s top leaders on how they can minimize instances of biases as individuals and as leaders. Inclusion Labs will then further use Pinterest’s diversity results for tests and research to understand what’s working and what hurdles they face, which will be shared with the public.
