Diversity is key to the development of every human endeavor, technology has brought us closer together than ever, making the issue of diversity a compulsory challenge to confront. In this assignment I am going to focus on the improvements Google has made to leverage on diversity which has also contributed to the tremendous successes of the company.
Racial diversity is barely improving for black and Latino staff, Google has changed their recruitment strategy by leveraging on diversity. In 2014 the percentage of Asian workers at Google increased from 30 percent to 36.3 percent. Jamie C. (2018).
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Bonita Stewart is a perfect example of why new markets need fresh faces. Ten and a half years ago, she was recruited by Google out of Detroit where she ran communications for Daimler Chrysler to help lure automotive advertisers into the Digital Age from Google’s New York office. Today, as vice president of global partnerships, she makes sure that publishers are figuring out how to make money across the growing array of Google assets. Ellen M. (2017)
Gender parity is gradually being improved since 2014 even though figures at that time were not very impressive, in 2014 the percentage of women on Google’s staff rose to 30.9 percent from 30.6, again the percentage of technical roles at Google held by women has risen to 21.4 percent in 2018 from 16.6 percent in 2014. Jamie C. (2018).
Research has shown that diverse companies create more innovative products, happier customers, and better financial returns. . “We have found that companies who have proactively built and consistently fostered a diverse workforce often financially outperform their peers.” (Reported Thomson Reuters 2014, the first ever Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Index, an analysis of the practices of over 5,000 companies.
In this light Google’s aim at servicing everyone across the globe had gain a lot of success through diversity, the company leveraged on diversity by reaching out to Inc. in hopes of showing just how exactly diversity creates value for Google and, specifically, how it affects its bottom line. Google gave Inc. access to a handful of its employees. They hail from all portions of the world, ranging from around the U.S. to Nigeria, and they're spread across Google's most important teams. Allan Thygesen, Google president of marketing solutions (n.d.)
For instance born and raised in Mexico City, Alberto Villarreal, the creative lead and industrial design manager for Google's consumer hardware unit, was the lead designer behind the exterior of the Pixel, Google's latest smartphone.
According to Alberto Villarreal “Google released the Pixel in three different colors, 'Quite Black, Very Silver, or Really Blue,' as they are described online. Often, phone makers release their devices in black and white options, making the Pixel's Really Blue a distinctive offering among handsets. The blue is a bright, joyful, and expressive tone that Villarreal says he believes he chose because of his background growing up in Mexico's culture of colorful and expressively loud art”.
The device sold so fast, with analysts predicting that the Pixel could provide as much as an additional $4 billion in revenue on top of what Google already brings in. Inc.com (n.d.)
Through diversity Google has been successful in tapping into emerging markets, “Take Kechy Eke, a technical account manager on the Google technical services team who was raised in Nigeria, and soon after arriving at Google in 2015, she noticed there was a need for a Google employee group focused on Africa. “The group, Africans@Google, has blossomed to nearly 200 members and become a gathering spot for Googlers of African descent. More importantly, Eke says, it serves the company's bottom line as a forum for exploring how best to grow business on the continent, where there are many emerging markets and untapped consumers”. Inc.com (n.d.).
“Again Amber Yust, who was raised in Massachusetts, has used her experiences as a transgender woman to influence her work as an engineering manager on Google's privacy and security team. Yust's role is to ensure users' data, particularly their sensitive information, is kept secure on Google's service”. She said she was very cognizant of how identity works and how people often go about portraying and communicating their identity. Inc.com (n.d.).
Yust was part of the team that worked on introducing custom genders and pronouns to Google's services in 2014. This was an effort championed by Yust and her peers as a way to ensure that all users felt welcome on Google's services. Inc.com (n.d.).
Furthermore Howard Sueing an African-American man from a low-income socioeconomic background was part of Google's privacy and security team, Sueing has contributed to the creation of Google's Transparency reports, which shows users the requests Google gets from the likes of law enforcement and copyright owners. Sueing, who is the global co-chair for the Black Googler Network, has also worked on Google Takeout, the tool that makes it simple for users to download their data, such as their emails, photos, and documents, off of Google's services.
Finally in conclusion “to maximize revenue from a product, you need diversity of people building it”, says Howard Sueing, a Google software engineer. 'You're shooting yourself in the foot if you don't do that because regardless of how clever you think you are or what Ivy League school you went to, there's some perspective that you don't have or know about.”. Inc.com (n.d.).
Reference:
- Nytimes.com (2018), Google diversity report, retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/business/dealbook/google-diversity-report.html
- Fortune.com (n.d.), Google diversity strategy, retrieved from https://fortune.com/longform/google-diversity/
- Inc.com (n.d.), Google’s successes through diversity, retrieved from https://www.inc.com/salvador-rodriguez/google-diversity-bottom-line.html