Facebook has released its second diversity report and for all its statements that it is committed to fostering a more heterogenous workforce, the social network continues to fail miserably in its efforts.
As of May 2015, a majority of all Facebook workers consisted mostly of whites. Specifically, 55 percent of all U.S. Facebook employees were white, which shows a very small improvement over last year's 57 percent. Asians saw a small rise in number from 34 percent to 36 percent, but Hispanics and blacks saw their numbers stay flat at 4 percent and 2 percent respectively.
The disparity in favor of male, white employees is even more glaring in Facebook's senior leadership. Despite having a woman sitting on the second most powerful position at Facebook, 77 percent of Facebook's senior managers across the world are men and, in the United States, 68 percent of them are white.
Across all of Facebook's global offices, only 32 percent of its entire workforce is composed of women, signifying a 1 percent improvement over last year's 31 percent. In technical roles, women continue to comprise a mere 16 percent, which is actually up also by 1 percent, while 52 percent of all non-technical positions are filled by women.
The numbers reflect the wide gender gap in Silicon Valley, which is struggling to promote a more diverse culture across the board. Along with Facebook, major technology firms have outed their diversity reports, showing a large preference for white, male employees in their upper ranks and in their technical teams.
Maxine Williams, global director of diversity at Facebook, said "having a diverse workforce is not only the right thing to do—it's the smart thing to do for our business." Williams is being generous by calling the 1 percent improvements "modest," but she admitted that "it's clear to all that we still aren't where we want to be."
It's not for a lack of effort. Since Facebook announced its commitment to setting the bar for a diverse workforce, the social network has invested in several measures to encourage minorities to go into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, including gearing computer science program ads toward young women on Facebook, inviting college freshmen from minorities to join a summer training program to hone their talents, and holding bias training for its employees.
Williams says Facebook plans to do more this year, including institute a controversial new hiring rule that requires hiring managers to consider at least one minority member in a hiring decision. The rule is similar to something implemented in the National Football League (NFL) that has resulted in the increase of NFL coaches in minorities since 2003.
Facebook has also partnered with LeanIn.org, LinkedIn and The Anita Borg Institute to develop support circles for women working in the field. This is based on research that shows women participate more and take bigger risks when they have access to a network of support.
In addition, Facebook is expanding Facebook University and its managing bias training course.
"There's more work to do," said Williams. "We remain deeply committed to building a workplace that reflects a broad range of experience, thought, geography, age, background, gender, sexual orientation, language, culture and many other characteristics. It's a big task, one that will take time to achieve, but our whole company continues to embrace this challenge."
