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A Snapshot of DEI Metrics in U.S. Technology Companies
A Newsletter from Aura Workforce Analytics
💡 Diverse & inclusive workplaces are crucial for successful businesses to drive growth, attract top talent, and ultimately improve business performance - therefore, it is imperative for organizations to regularly & rigorously analyze DE&I metrics.
💡 When applying such metrics to DE&I leaders amongst US Technology companies, we identify potential gaps for ongoing improvement in ethnicity representation (overall & by function), tenure for different ethnic groups, and female representation (overall & at the leadership level).
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Inclusive workplaces are the future of successful businesses. This may seem like a simple concept, but embracing the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is critical in driving growth. As a commitment to DE&I becomes more and more important to the next generation of talent, a growing number of job seekers are also demanding transparency when recruiting. Efforts on DE&I will result in improved business performance, profitability and, of course, employee commitment to the company.
At Aura, we believe that DE&I goes beyond the standard metrics that company usually releases, such as percentage of females and percentage of minorities. We believe that there is a need to dive deeper and have devised further scoring metrics that focus on diversity & inclusion across functions and levels. We also believe that factors such as tenure across different groups have a strong correlation to a company's outlook towards DE&I.
In this article, we deep dive into Adobe, Salesforce, and Oracle, three DE&I leaders among the top US technology companies based on Aura DE&I metrics.
Representation –relatively balanced among leadership and overall employee base yet still gaps to be filled
Adobe, Salesforce, and Oracle have a relatively balanced workforce today.
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Using Oracle as an example, we can see that there is still room for improvement with certain underrepresented groups such as Hispanic and Black. Companies can consider targeted programs to increase representation, such as summer internship programs for these underrepresented groups or affinity programs.
Looking at Oracle’s leadership team, we see that representation is relatively similar to the overall employee base, with less than 3 percentage point difference between the leadership team and the employee bases for each ethnic group.
One thing worth pointing out, however, is these underrepresented groups, such as Hispanic and Black, have lower representation at the leadership level. This is a common DE&I issue among many companies – few ways of tackling this can be more transparent promotion and succession planning and mentorship and sponsorship programs.
Ethnicity by Function: potential areas of improvement in Sales & Marketing
The representation data above gives a good sense of ethnic diversity at overall company level. However, it is also important to ensure diversity across departments. Many employees interact more within their own department, thus having diversity within the department promotes a broader range of perspectives and ideas, fostering innovation and creativity.
Oracle and Salesforce have a relatively balanced organization overall. Yet with some of the more relationship-driven departments, such as Sales, people from ethnic minority groups still struggle with representation. Companies can consider having targeted recruiting initiatives such as Black and Latinx in engineering summer programs to improve diversity.
Tenure by Demographic Group: potential areas of improvement among certain ethnic groups, but relatively balanced between male & female
We also consider how balanced tenure is for employees from different ethnic backgrounds and gender. One signal of employees having a sense of belonging is the willingness to stay at the company for a longer period of time. This is also a key metric to look at to make sure that the organization promotes fairness and mitigate potential biases or discrimination.
Oracle is one of the technology companies Aura analyzed that has good tenure metrics, even though we still found slightly lower average tenure among Hispanic and Black employees as well as female employees. Some of the programs Oracle have in place, such as Oracle Women’s Leadership (OWL), might have helped with bridging the gap.
Female Representation: significant potential for improvement both at the leadership level & at the overall level
Gender diversity in companies brings numerous benefits. For many technology companies, however, there is still a long way to go in order to achieve gender diversity and inclusion.
Aura data shows that female accounts for less than 35% of the workforce at Oracle. Salesforce is slightly better at 40%. Furthermore, when individuals see themselves represented in leadership positions, they feel valued and are more likely to contribute their best work. However, there is an even lower percentage of women at the top level compared with the overall company for both Salesforce and Oracle, indicating room for improvement.
As we have identified here, these industry-leading companies perform relatively well in many of Aura’s DE&I-related metrics. However, in order to sustain this performance or continue to improve, regular & rigorous analysis of these DE&I metrics is essential, highlighting potential gaps to target in future workforce design. At Aura, we support this effort by making workforce data & analytics readily available, enabling comparison of relevant metrics against industry peer benchmarks and exemplars to drive meaningful change.
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Jennifer Xu / Matthew Chan
Product Manager / Product Economist, Aura
Note: All information mentioned in this report comes from publicly available data; if you believe the information on your company is incorrect, please reach out to us at:
aura@bain.comFounded by Bain & Company in 2020, Aura is a workforce analytics platform consisting of over 10M companies, 950M working professionals, 20M skills, 400M jobs, daily updates, and easy reporting. Through a convenient monthly subscription service and with a track record of servicing hundreds of Bain & Company’s clients, Aura is your partner in understanding workforce-related topics, such as hiring patterns, retention, promotion, employee efficiency, diversity and inclusion. Experience the future of workforce analytics and unlock your competitive edge with Aura.
DE&I in US Technology Companies: A Snapshot
