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20/02/2021

Google Executives Will Be Evaluated On Diversity And Inclusion From This Year




Google Executives Will Be Evaluated On Diversity And Inclusion From This Year
Starting this year, the performance of top executives of the company – starting with people in the ranks of vice presidents and above, will be evaluated for promotion of team diversity and inclusion, said Alphabet Inc's Google.
 
This was mentioned by the company in one of its several responses over concerns expressed about its treatment of a Black scientist.
 
Google had dismissed her from her job abruptly after she had criticised the diversity efforts of Google and had threatened to resign in protest, Timnit Gebru, co-leader of Google's ethical artificial intelligence research team, had complained in December.
 
A review of the situation had been ordered by Alphabet and Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai. The company said that human resources specialists during sensitive employee departures will be engaged by the company but did not share any more specific findings  of the review.
 
The company has set a target to achieve a target of hiving at least 30 per cent or more of its employees in leadership position from underrepresented groups, with a focus on Black, Latinx and Native American leaders in the United States, Pichai had said in June last year. The company has also set a target to also increase the number of female technical leaders globally.
 
At the time of the statement by Pichai, people from Asian or white ethnicity accounted for about 96 per cent of Google's US leaders while men accounted for 73 per cent of its leaders globally. 
 
The company had in June announced a commitment for devoting more resources to retaining and promoting existing employees which will include measures such as expanding a team addressing disputes among workers and their managers, and that commitment has now also been expanded by the company as a result of the investigation.
 
The company had not previously announced the diversity component of executive performance reviews while it also did not share any details about what it would measure as a KPI for those parameters and how poor performance in these aspects would affect the pay of the executives.
 
For a number of years, proposals to set diversity goals and tie executive pay to them by shareholders and employees have been rejected by Alphabet.
 
One of the notable employees in this regards is Irene Knapp, now a former employee of the company, who had in a 2018 shareholder meeting has advocated for one such proposal. "I am pleased that they met our demand from 2018, which was a bare minimum that should have been easy to do immediately," Knapp told the media on the company’s latest announcement.
 
It is becoming commonplace for corporates to start to evaluate managers on diversity goals. Executive bonuses were tied to diversity in an announcement this week by McDonald's Corp.
 
(Source:www.ndtv.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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