Facebook has seemingly been working hard to achieve a more diverse work force, and its efforts are paying off almost unanimously, though growth is a little on the slow side for some metrics. There is one target metric that’s not had any growth in the last five years, and that’s Black and Hispanic employees in technical roles, numbers that are currently stuck at 1% and 3% respectively. Representation of women in all parts of Facebook’s corporate structure is growing, and ethnicities besides white have also shown growth, aside from the aforementioned category. The growth seems slow on paper, given the percentages in the report, though just how much change in hiring and promoting there really has been can’t be determined without looking at turnover rates for the categories in the report, something Facebook has not provided.
To be specific, the overall amount of women in the company has increased by a bit over 1% year on year, making for a roughly 5% growth in the last five years. Technical roles saw a five-year bump from 15% to 22%, 47% to 57% for business and sales roles, and 23% to 30% for senior leadership. The company did suffer a number of dramatic exits lately, but the numbers jumping that much means that a large amount of the people leaving were replaced by women. While perfect gender diversity is obviously a solid 50/50 split, ideal diversity across races can be harder to define and can depend heavily on a number of factors like local demographics, the availability of education, and other companies in the area, to name a few. Facebook has been working hard to advocate for more diversity, and as a result, Black and Hispanic employees grew from 2% and 4% respectively to 4% and 5%. The total percentage of the company made up of white employees has dropped from 57% to 46% over the past five years, with increases in percentages of Asian employees sitting at 6% for the last five years, and ethnicities outside of White, Asian, Black and Hispanic, such as 2 or more mixed or those that fall under the “other” umbrella going from a statistically insignificant amount of employees to now making up about 1% of the company overall.
It’s hard to say that Facebook hasn’t been paying at least some attention to getting diversity numbers up, but initiatives that play to school-age talent and fostering future generations are one of the company’s biggest investment categories in diversity right now, and those will take a while to pan out. In the mean time, promoting non-white and female employees into higher categories and actively trying to fill less roles with white people, especially white males, are just some of the measures that Facebook could take to try and balance the company’s often-criticized diversity numbers.