Tech Spotlight

Including everyone is easier in the long-term and intrinsically more equitable — especially for those in more than one underrepresented group, who suffer even greater consequences.

Overview

Nationwide in the U.S., the tech industry has developed a reputation for having a white, male dominated culture. Discrimination against and underrepresentation of women and people of color, and especially women of color, is a known and documented issue affecting the industry. The lack of diversity is especially magnified in Silicon Valley. Project Include works with CEOs and management of small to mid-stage start-ups and VCs to incorporate diversity and inclusion solutions into tech startup companies’ cultures. Working with organizations at an early stage enables Project Include to encourage tech executives to have a positive impact and effective change and to bake D&I work into company processes from the start, treating it as they would any other business imperative.

Blacks and Latinx employees in the top 75 tech firms constitute between 3 and 6 percent of workers and women of color compromise 1 percent or less.¹

Project Include uses data and advocacy to promote transparency and accountability around diversity and inclusion. Startup Include is its program launched in 2015, to “define and encourage best practices in metrics, data collection, and reporting across tech companies.” ²

The Challenge

The 2015 Future list survey found that 92 percent of the senior investment teams were male and 78 percent were white; it also counted a total of only four black VCs and seven Latinx VCs out of 552 senior VC investors.

About the Intervention

Working with US-based tech companies, mostly in Silicon Valley, and based on actual numbers from Startup Include companies, Project Include has developed a series of recommendations, case studies and metrics:

● Recommendations: an extensive guide to HR practices that can be deployed in the tech industry to promote more inclusive culture, lifecycle, hiring, training, and conflict resolution
● Case studies: short fact sheets that focus on identity-based discrimination for a variety of identities (non-binary, transgender, age, veteran status, disability, caregiver, religious, and LGBTQA)
● Metrics: four targets, to be introduced over a period of two years:³
- ○ 10% of employees should be Black/African American/African
- ○ 10% of employees should be Latinx/Hispanic
- ○ 5% of an inclusive company’s workforce will likely be nonbinary
- ○ The remaining employees should be an even balance of men and women with a hard target of 45% identifying as women

Startup Include began with an inaugural program in 2015 consisting of a cohort of startups working together over a year to collect baseline and follow-up data, review cohort data reports, and form a peer network for CEOs to discuss challenges and recommendations for improving diversity and inclusion at their startups. The companies include Asana, Clef, Coinbase, Dialpad, Dreambox, Figma, Genius Plaza, Lendup, Managed by Q, Patreon, Periscope Data, Puppet, Splice, Truss, Twilio and Upserve.

Impact & Future Plans

Implementation matters, and Project Include has three specific implementation rules for 10–10–5–45 targets:

● Reinforce targets across the whole recruiting and retention processes. If the process is flawed from the start, even the Rooney Rule can’t make qualified hires magically appear at the end
● Apply targets cross-functionally and up the full length of the corporate ladder. Establish clear promotion paths that offer all talented employees a fair shot at senior positions. Many companies recruit employees of color or from other underrepresented groups at junior and lower management positions, but then limit career progression. Research on the “bamboo ceiling” shows that Asian employees are least likely of any group to make it to senior roles
● Apply the 5% nonbinary guideline to racial/ethnic groups, with at least 45% of employees in all groups identifying as binary women. Intersectionality matters Project Include is forging new paths, and will continue to work with startups and their CEOs to implement 10-10-5-45 targets. The team will evolve these metrics as they learn.