Twitter Wants Its Work Force to Be 43% Women, 5% Each Black and Latinx by Year-End
Dalana Brand was promoted to vp of people experience and head of diversity and inclusion
Twitter issued its 2018 Inclusion and Diversity Report Thursday, saying that its goal for year-end 2019 is to have women represent 43 percent of its overall workforce, while in the U.S., it is aiming for 5 percent black and 5 percent Latinx.
The social network said that from December 2017 through December 2018, women at the company worldwide rose from 38.4 percent to 40.2 percent, while blacks went from 3.4 percent of the U.S. workforce to 4.5 percent and Latinx from 3.4 percent to 3.9 percent.
Chief marketing officer Leslie Berland also revealed in a tweet that Dalana Brand was promoted to vice president of people experience and head of diversity and inclusion.
Brand has only been with the company since last August, when she joined as vp of total rewards after holding the same post at game developer Electronic Arts.
Twitter broke down its workforce representation (global for women, U.S. only for blacks and Latinx) by leadership and technical.
Women made up 35.8 percent of the company’s leadership at the end of last year, up from 32.5 percent in December 2017, while blacks in leadership rose to 4.7 percent from 3.5 percent and Latinx edged up slightly, from 2.6 percent to 2.7 percent.
On the technical side of Twitter, women went up to 20.2 percent from 17.3 percent, while blacks rose to 2.9 percent from 2.2 percent and Latinx to 3.2 percent from 2.3 percent.
Women made up 45.7 percent of new hires overall at Twitter last year, while blacks represented 7.4 percent of new hires in the U.S. and Latinx accounted for 4.9 percent.
On the flip side, women accounted for 39.6 percent of attrition at the company worldwide, while in the U.S., blacks made up 3.9 percent and Latinx 4.2 percent.
Twitter said in a blog post, “We have a lot of work to do with our overall Latinx representation, with improvement in 2018 at just 0.5 of a percentage point. We need to retain the amazing Tweeps we have, and we’ll focus on attracting new people. We will work closely with Twitter Alas—our business resource group for Latinx employees and allies—the people team and external partners to help us close this gap with urgency.”
The social network also provided a broader look in the chart below.
Berland fired off a series of tweets, with highlights including:
- Twitter will now publish its Inclusion and Diversity Report quarterly, instead of annually.
- “We’re also in the process of conducting pay equity and promotion analyses, and we will share results for these demographics when our work is complete.”
- Twitter built an internal diversity dashboard that will be updated daily, with plans to eventually share it publicly.
- The company is revamping its self-ID process to collect more accurate data, including on military status and disabilities.
- On Brand’s promotion: “With this move, Dalana will oversee I&D, as well as global people policies and standards, compensation and benefits, global mobility, analytics, systems and ops.”
- In another executive move, Candi Castleberry Singleton is now vp, diversity partnership strategy and engagement. She had been vp of I&D.
She concluded, “These steps are new for us. Our goal is to learn fast and push ourselves further as we go. Please share your thoughts and questions! Tell us what works, what’s missing and where we’re falling short. We want to continue this conversation, and drive progress, together.”
