Google's Diversity Issues in the Workplace Essay

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Diversity for the Benefit of Business

As Harper (2017) notes, diversity is an increasingly important aspect of business strategy for many companies: it represents the desire by corporations to demonstrate greater corporate social responsibility and tie diversity-promotion in with business success. Google, whose motto is “Do no evil,” has long attempted to promote diversity in its workplace—but the tech company’s success in promoting diversity for the benefit of business has not succeeded very well and the company is now facing a number of law suits from workers who claim they have been targeted, harassed and fired for having a minority viewpoint. Case in point is James Damore, a white male with conservative views who questioned Google’s liberal bias (Nocera, 2018). The issue at Google is somewhat complex: Damore has alleged that Google discriminates against white conservative males; former Google developer Tim Chevalier has alleged that he was let go from the company for mounting a defense against discrimination of ethnic minorities made by white workers; meanwhile, in its attempt to make the workplace more diverse, Google has allegedly “told recruiters for certain jobs to consider candidates only ‘from our underrepresented groups’…and to cancel interviews with white and Asian male job candidates and to purge applications that weren’t women or minorities” which is a type of reverse-discrimination (Nocera, 2018). In short, Google has been hit from all sides of the aisle when it comes to diversity: it has been accused of being too liberal and not liberal enough. In order to address the attacks from all directions, Google has had to come clean about what the diversity situation really is at Google. In order to align its corporate social responsibility policy on diversity with its actual workplace culture, Google had to do some considerable soul searching (McGirt, 2017) and help stakeholders get to the heart of the matter.

Public Relations

Objective: Getting the Truth Out

In order to manage the fallout from the James Damore letter and lawsuit that resulted from his firing, Google launched a public relations campaign to show that it was proactively trying to “do no evil” when it comes to diversity in the workplace. On the Official Blog of Google, Laszlo Bock, the company’s senior vice president of people operations, stated, “We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues” (Bock, 2014). The post revealed that 70% of Google’s employees were male, 30% female, 61% white, 30% Asian, and other 10% were of various other races and ethnicities. McGregor (2014) acknowledged that Google’s decision to release its worker demographics was a step in the right direction: one cannot help oneself until one admits it has a problem. McGregor (2014) stated that “while the numbers may not paint a rosy picture of diversity at Google, several advocates for getting more women and minorities into tech applauded the company's willingness to lead the way in sharing gender and racial demographics.” Google’s PR objective has been, therefore, to identify the facts, set the record straight, and identify its goals.

Strategy

Google’s strategy to address its diversity issues has been to open up about the company’s lack of diversity in the workplace as a starting point.

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Prior to this revelation, Google, like many other Silicon Valley tech companies, has never released such information. However, in order to address the issues raised by Damore, it released its demographics to show that its attempts to increase diversity were justified by the company’s lack of diversity in the workplace. However, Damore’s complaints were leveled more at the company’s political diversity than at racial or ethnic diversity. Armagan and Ferreira (2005) note “that four dimensions of political culture – nationalism, internationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism – influence firms’ willingness to explore new opportunities and/or to exploit existing products and capabilities across borders” (p. 275). For Google, the strategy has been to conduct diversity training—but that only fanned the flames of political bias that Damore was accusing the company of perpetuating (Pierson & Lien, 2017). According to Google’s own Diversity page, this strategy includes four steps:

1. Sharing progress toward a more representative Google

2. Expanding access to careers in technology

3. Strengthening the company’s community outreach

4. Broadening supplier network and creating inclusive products (Building a Google That Works for Everyone, 2018).

Tactics

Digital media. Google used its digital media blog to come clean on its lack of diversity in the workplace. Its diversity page identifies its strategic aims and offers links to explain in more detail how the company is addressing the diversity topic within its own walls. The company has also used its Google blog to post articles related to how it is advancing its diversity expansion program, for example, via posts by the company’s Global Diversity and Inclusion Director, Yolanda Mangolini, who posted during Black History month about the important contribution that that Google’s Black Googler Network was making at the company (Mangolini, 2016).

Social media. Google has not used social media so much as been the target of social media users in its efforts to boost diversity at the workplace. As Bergen and Huet (2017) note, “Some right-wing websites lionized Damore and accused the company of censoring conservative views.” Moreover, the company’s lack of a social media strategy, has allowed some opponents to see Damore’ firing as confirmation “that the company’s culture makes no room for dissenting political opinions” (Bergen & Huet, 2017). Insteadd, Google CEO Sundar Pichai simply sent a message internally to workers, which indicated that Damore’s memo questioning the company’s diversity policy was a violation of “Code of Conduct and crossed the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace” (Begen & Huet, 2017). Still, Google has used Twitter to promote some of its programs, like #40Forward, “which works with organizations to increase the representation of female entrepreneurs in startup communities, and our baby-friendly startup school Campus for Moms” (Grove, 2015).

Ethical Implication of the Public Relations Efforts

The ethical implications of Google’s Public….....

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