Tag: gender

Microsoft’s pay gap better than average but still pretty terrible

Posted on March 30, 2018 by - News

glass-ceiling_1Microsoft’s female UK staff are paid on average seven percent less than their male counterparts, which is depressingly better than the rest of the overall workforce.

The government’s Gender Pay Gap report legislation, enacted last year, requires all firms with over 250 employees to disclose their pay gaps and Vole revealed that the mean hourly pay of its female staff is 6.55 percent lower than its male staff. The median figure stands at 8.42 per cent.

Although this sounds pretty bad, the overall gap in the UK national workforce is 17 percent. Vole also has significantly lower pay discrepancies than the rest of the UK.

In its gender pay gap report, Microsoft revealed that 26.5 percent of its UK workforce is female.

However, that percentage falls to 18.2 percent for technical roles and 22.9 percent among its leadership team. The bonuses Microsoft gave its female employees last year also trailed those handed to males by 11.22 percent.

Vole said that the reason there is any difference is probably due to having more men in its senior echelons but also highlighted the worrying lack of females choosing to study IT.

“To be successful in reducing the gender pay gap, we need to acknowledge the industry-wide challenge we face for available skills,” the report stated. This year, the number of female IT graduates in the UK dropped from 16 percent in 2016 to 15 percent in 2017, with a similarly disappointing picture of just 14 percent female graduates in Engineering and Technology. In 2017, just 10 percent of the entrants for A-level computing were female.

“This, combined with an industry average of 26 per cent female representation in the technology industry workforce, indicates a clear need to invest further in the future skills, talent and leadership pipeline for our industry.”

Microsoft is running a DigiGirlz programme, which is designed to provide secondary school girls with a better understanding of what a career in technology is all about by inviting them to spend a day at our UK headquarters.

Microsoft’s UK Boss Cindy Rose said that throughout her career, she had been a passionate advocate for women in the workplace.

“This is an issue of critical importance to me and to Microsoft. And, while I’m encouraged by the progress we are making on gender equality and representation, we still have a long way to go. We can always do more, and I feel the urgency to do so.”

Intel’s diversity plans revealed

Posted on February 13, 2015 by - News

diversityatintel.rendition.cq5dam.thumbnail.606.336Intel’s Rosalind Hudnell is working on an ambitious plan to create a more diverse staff base at Intel.

Hudnell is Intel’s chief diversity officer,  and is responsible for implementing the company’s much publicised $300 million initiative to bring more women and under-represented minorities into its workforce by 2020. Talking to IT World she said that the company is diverse, but not diverse enough.

If she pulls it off she could break Silicon Valley’s dominance by white and Asian males, but she has an uphill battle as efforts so far have been inconsistent

Intel had 107,600 employees worldwide at the end of 2013.  Only 24 percent are women and four percent African-Americans.

Intel does have women top executives including Renee James, who is president, and Diane Bryant, who runs the Data Centre Group. And let us never forget Genevieve Bell. Intel already provides same sex domestic partner benefits; it also offers LGBT and faith- and culture-based resources to workers.  Gender and race diversity is apparently a  little tricky.

Intel is establishing specific numbers on hiring a more diverse workforce and tying executive compensation to meet those goals. However, even with Intel’s renewed commitment to diversity, the company’s workforce will still be just about 32 percent women in five years.

Most of the $300 million will be applied over five years to change hiring practices, “retool human resources”, whatever that means, fund companies run by minorities and women, and promote STEM education in high schools.

The problem is getting talent. Science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) degrees are still mostly taken by men. Around 74 percent of computer professionals and 86 percent of engineers are men.

Intel aims to build a larger pipeline of qualified candidates over time by investing in STEM education.

Intel is monitoring its diversity initiative based on 59 measures related to gender, race, education and corporate role. For example, Intel wants employ more women, Hispanic and African-Americans in technical and engineering roles, which are dominated by white and Asian males. A diversity goal for the technical group will be different from the non-technical group, which employs a larger percentage of women.

Intel will also step up investments in companies run by minorities and women. That means change for the capital investment program, which is known for relying on word-of-mouth for funding decisions and being unresponsive to companies seeking investment.

“We’ll be very clear and transparent about what we’re looking for,” Hudnell said. “We’ll have a diverse advisory board that will probably make those decisions,” Hudnell said.