Diversity at work

1. Organizational Background

Google Inc. is one of the most popular companies in the world. It is a global technology company built around the company 's hugely popular search engine (Karch, 2014). Its key businesses include Internet analytics, cloud computing, advertising technologies, and Web app, browser and operating system development, enterprise and hardware products. The company is well known for its Google Search, which provides information online and allows users to search for things, people, or places, as well as builds systems that recognize speech and understand natural language. Google is a very big company that has over 70 offices in more than 40 countries with different types of people in the workplace. In 2013, Google had 47,756 full-time employees (Statista, 2014). It offers many positions mostly involve with engineering and information technology. There are also many other teams and roles in the company such as Sale and Account management, Marketing and Communication, Real Estate and Workplace service, Partnership, Product management, and so forth. Apart from Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two founders of Google, Eric E. Schmidt, David C. Drummond and Patrick Pichette are also members of the company’s executive team. The senior managers include Alan Eustace, Amit Singhal, Craig Barratt, Kent Walker, Laszlo Bock, Lorraine Twohill, Omid Kordestani, Rachel Whetstone, Salar Kamangar, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Sundar Pichai, Susan Wojcicki, Urs Hölzle (About Google, 2014). Since Google employs people from wide variety of backgrounds in order to have more unique experiences and perspectives, the company tries to encourage Googlers to be themselves at work. Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are one way the company manage its diversity workforce. For example, The Black Googler Network (BGN) is actively involved in supporting black workers in Google; The LGBT Community support the company’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees through strong internal networks; The Google Veterans Network fosters a network supporting veterans, reservists, guardsmen to attract, recruit, and retain top veteran talent at Google; and so forth. Another policy is the annual Take Your Child to Work Day (based on the national Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day) share the Google experience with their children and give their kids a glimpse into their professional lives. Google also offers many benefits for its employers such as health benefits coverage for same-sex domestic partners, offering an equivalent to the Family Medical Leave Act for same-sex domestic partners, provides families a trusted place to easily connect to babysitters, nannies, special needs care, senior care givers, pet sitters, dog walkers, and such (Google Inc., 2011). The company serves over one million of advertisers, from small businesses targeting local customers to many of the world 's largest global enterprises and helps them to reach millions of users around the world by using Google AdWords.

2. Industry and National Information

The technology industry, just like other industries, consists of many different occupations. Computer occupations make up more than half the industry, but there are also a large number of managers, business and financial workers, and administrative employees work in the industry as well to keep the IT companies running smoothly. Since the technology industry focuses mostly on computer science, there is only a minority of women working in it. The US is a country with a diverse population. Thus, there are a lot of different people from different backgrounds with different ethnicities and races in the labor force. Though the white are still more preferred, there has been an increase in the percentage of Blacks and Asian in the workforce. Blacks representation increased to 12% of total workforce while Asian representation increased by 0.3%, from 23.5% to 23.8% (UCLA, 2010). Furthermore, in the US, there is about 49 percent of female currently in the workforce. However, this percentage is lower in the technology industry. The technology industry is often criticized for not being open enough for those outside of the white men since people often believe that male are to be more suitable for the jobs. It is reported that the ratio of women is about 20 to 23 percent among the companies that are considered top employers for women in computing (McGregor, 2014). Hence, the number of female working in this industry is very small. In the case of Google, it has been revealed that employees in the company are mostly white men while there is only 30% of women and 2% of black representing in its workforce (About Google, 2014). Employers have an obligation to provide employees a safe work environment free from discrimination, harassment and intimidation. Therefore, employers have the responsibilities to manage its diversity in the workplace. Nevertheless, Google has done better than other companies in trying to create a diversity working environment and managing its workforce. For example, Cisco Systems Inc. and Intel Corp. only have around 25% of female and Dell has about 31%.

3. Diversity issue

Google, as one of the biggest and most popular company, aims to increase its diverse environment by employing a lot of talented people around the world. Along with this, the company adopts many policies in order to support its workers as well as to reduce the different among them. However, all organizations have inequality regimes (Acker, 2006). It is undeniable that the company’s workforce still lacks diversity and is now facing gender and race discrimination. According to Google, there are roughly 30% of women working at the company. This number is more extreme with only 17% of female who are in the technical roles. When narrowed by seniority, there is only 21% of leadership positions held by women (About Google, 2014). Also, the percentage of blacks working for Google only accounts for 2%. Nevertheless, the company needs to solve these diversity issues in order to perform better.
Why is diversity important for companies? Humin found a depth and breadth of female talent. Today, one third of Humin’s 18-person engineering team are women. Two of those hold PhDs. In many industries, especially the technology industry, companies find it hard to recruit and retain women in the workplace due to company ethos clashes and women perceiving less qualified men being promoted above them (Neeraj Kaushik, 2014). As a result, the companies suffer from a severe shortage of talent. Having a diverse workforce means that the organization has more staffs with the unique knowledge, experience and skills that can improve the organization’s performance. It can also encourage innovation during work. This is why companies usually try to expand their diversity workforce as diversity in the workplace is more profitable. However, since there is only a minority of women studying about software and computing system, leaving out women means that company loses half of their potential talent pool and limiting their innovation capability.
The under-representation of women in the work place is mostly because of gender discrimination in the workplace. Gender discrimination is wide phenomenon that needs to be aware in the organization. Gender discrimination refers to the unequal treatment against people of either sex, often experienced by female. In today’s world, it can be seen clearly that the executive members of a company are mostly males while women are mostly entrusted in small projects and don’t have much chances to be promoted to higher positions. Thus, women are now facing gender discrimination in many forms in the workplace and this can have negative effect on their performance (Zahid Ali Channar, 2011).
According to Acker, jobs and occupations are often segregated by gender (Acker, 2006). Traditional belief assumed that some jobs should be carried out by men while some are done by women (Kliuchk, 2011). For example, since technological positions are mostly hold by men, people consider that it should be done by men, not women. This is one of gender stereotypes that often seen in the society. Gender stereotypes can be defined as a shared set of beliefs about the natural determination of male and female social characteristics (Joel T. Nadler, 2012). Male are generally considered to be strong, aggressive self oriented and the leaders whereas female are described as sentimental, submissive and superstitious. Besides, some believe that women, being emotionally weak are incompatible with high pressure workload, cannot be tough taskmaster; travelling and overnight for business purpose. Hence, in an organization, men are to have the dominant roles and responsible for making decisions while women are often assigned to do small tasks. Another problem often seen is that interviewers for the jobs are usually men and are not likely to hire those who are different from them. Hence, female are often rejected for the job.
Gender discrimination leads to a common phenomenon in organization called glass ceiling. The term describes a transparent ceiling that prevents women and minorities from reaching upper level management levels in the workforce (Parcheta, Kaifi, & Khanfar, 2013). Women are hindered in their career’s development because of the prevalence of too many male executives at the top acting as a ceiling for the women reaching the top (Neeraj Kaushik, 2014). It is reported that the total workforce of the USA made up of 46% of women, but only 2% of which held high position (Micheal, 2007). Also, women who wish to achieve managerial positions are hindered by gender role stereotypes of men, women, and management positions. For instance, women who strive to succeed in a masculine work have to face obstacles such as gender bias while men taking a stereotypical feminine job, such as caring for children, are more likely to find it hard to be recruited (Eagly & Carli, 2007). These types of gender stereotypes about women as a result, make them at the disadvantage in the workplace.
Furthermore, even if women manage to acquire top managerial positions in organizations, they are more likely to perceive workplace pressure in order to balance between career and family. Men get promoted quicker than women because they are more willing to relocate and it is more acceptable to move the family for the husband 's job. They can also work longer hours since the wife already takes care of everything at home. However, women, on the other hand, spend almost twice as much time as a working man on household chores and care of the children. Men and women are equally likely to work on the weekends and take work home in the evenings (Skoloda, 2005). Nevertheless, with a lot of chores and children to take care of, women often decides to take easy and flexible jobs that allows them to spend time for the family. Many believe that "the man" and the "glass ceiling" are holding women back but the glass ceiling exists because of the biased attitude or male domination as well as women centric time-related problems and their attitudinal disposition, their family, children and job demand (Mueller, 2007).
Another diversity issue that has great effect on the organization is racial discrimination. In many big organizations, the management employs lots of people from different race but is reluctant to hire black people. The racial discrimination in hiring a new employee is quite obvious. Generally, a White American is more likely to find a job than any other American from other races. Racists believe that African American are lazy and unintelligent, live off welfare and are usually involved in criminal activities (Kleiner, 2003). This is one of the reasons that make black people has the highest unemployment rate. Among all the kinds of discrimination, racial discrimination is one of the most popular phenomena in the American workplace since the country is made up of a collection of diverse ethnic groups (Kleiner P. M., 2000).
Racial stereotypes disregard humanity and uniqueness of people. It can have negative effect on people as it demeaning, devaluing, limiting and hurtful to others. Furthermore, when being repeatedly perceived in a negative way, people will begin to have feelings of inferiority, creating a limitation for them to develop (Kleiner S. -H., 2003). Racism can sometimes cause people mental and physical illness. Thus, it would be better if people try to not be too racist and to overcome the misunderstanding among them.
In order to reduce racial and gender discrimination in the workplace, companies need to manage offenses and avoid discrimination and harassment issues at work. Employers should try to be more open minded to hire employees without any bias and stereotypes. The more people from different backgrounds are hired, the easier it is to increase diversity at work. Once the management gets to know and understand more about employees from different backgrounds, they can find out a suitable solution to reduce inequality regimes at workplace. Furthermore, management needs to have good relationship skills in order to resolve employees’ personal clashes. This can be done by offering managers as well as the staffs some diversity training programs (Hemphill & Haines, 1998). These programs can help changing employees’ values and belief systems by giving them a chance to understand each other’s differences.
When lacking the opportunity to connect with another race, people often use other’s experiences and information to form their own perception about them. Thus, there are some common stereotypes concerning race and gender that are unavoidable (Kleiner S. -H., 2003). People should be aware of those stereotypes and try to avoid mentioning them in front of others. Besides, when asked about the stereotyped target, people should pass the factual information to the stereotype holders so that they can change their belief. Any discrimination behaviors should be informed to the supervisors or management so that they can handle the problems immediately. Schools should have different culture introduction programs and offers students with the factual information about different races. This method can also be applied by organizations to help their employees with more knowledge about diversity culture. Since the media has an important role in forming people’s belief, the public should monitor the racial differences showed by the media. When the misrepresentation occurs, the media should try to correct it immediately so that it would not leave a negative impression about other races on people mind (Kleiner S. -H., 2003). Creating a friendly, comfortable environment at workplace along with providing teamwork activities can also make employees understand more about their colleagues. However, it is important that the company has suitable policies that prevent discrimination attitudes and support new employees with the company’s diversity culture. Furthermore, the company needs to encourage their staffs to be involved with the company’s activities and gives them more chances to develop their career. In short, in order to overcome inequality regimes in general as well as race and gender discrimination in particular, company has to make sure that its HR processes are well implemented.

4. Recommendations

In the case of Google, the company ought to seek and recruit women and people of black and Hispanic race more in order to expand the diversity of its workforce. Women working at Google can be offered with a more flexible work hours in order to keep their work and life balance. Also, the company has to ensure that the women in their company are satisfied with their job so that it can prevent them from leaving. There needs to have more training courses to help Googlers to be more skillful, adaptable and loyal to the company as well as some diversity training programs that introduces new staffs and assists them to become part of the company. Furthermore, Google’s staffs should be given chances to prove themselves and be promoted if they are suitable for the position without any unfair decisions. Besides, in order to fix their issue in the long term, Google has been trying to increasing the number of women and minorities in tech. It offered scholarship and sponsored a trip for women and minor so that they can be more interested in the techno logy industry. The company established a promised $50 million to “Made With Code,” to attract more women into coding (Russell, 2014). In short, Google should continue with their current policies that support its employees’ groups and also try to expand its diversity workforce by hiring and retaining its employees from different backgrounds.

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