Google Removes Diversity Hiring Goals; Here's What The Tech Giant Said
Previously, CEO Sundar Pichai set a target in 2020 to increase the representation of underrepresented groups in leadership roles by 30 per cent by 2025
Google has decided to discontinue its goal of hiring more employees from underrepresented groups and is reassessing some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Google’s move aligns with a broader trend of US companies scaling back diversity efforts.
"In 2020, we set aspirational hiring goals and focused on growing our offices outside California and New York to improve representation," Fiona Cicconi, Alphabet's chief people officer, said in an email to staff on Wednesday, a copy which was reviewed by Reuters. "...but in the future, we will no longer have aspirational goals."
"We're committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities, and over the last year we've been reviewing our programs designed to help us get there," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider.
For years, Google was one of the most vocal advocates for more inclusive policies, especially after the protests against the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020. In response, CEO Sundar Pichai set a target in 2020 to increase the representation of underrepresented groups in leadership roles by 30 per cent by 2025. At that time, 96 per cent of Google's US leaders were white or Asian, and 73 per cent of its global leadership were men.
In 2021, Google began evaluating executive performance based on team diversity and inclusion after a prominent AI research leader claimed the company fired her abruptly after she criticized its diversity efforts. In a 2024 BBC interview, Google's Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker stated that the company had achieved 60 per cent of its five-year diversity goals.
On Wednesday, an Alphabet spokesperson stated that the company did not have updated figures on Pichai's diversity goals, as per the Reuters report.
In its annual filing with the US SEC on the same day, Alphabet omitted a statement that had previously said the company was "committed to making diversity, equity and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve." This statement appeared in annual reports from 2021 to 2024. The spokesperson explained that the line was removed as part of the company's review of its DEI programs.
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