Diversity And Inclusion Issues At Facebook Company
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics points that close to 40 million new employees will be entering the labor force between 2016 and 2026. It is estimated that over this decade, the composition of the labor force will become older and more racially and ethnically diverse. As these demographics shift, will these new hires experience an inclusive culture where everyone will be able to bring their best foot forward, or will this diverse group of people be discriminated against and marginalized like the minority groups during the Civil Rights movement?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 established employers from discriminating because of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Yet to this day, women only represent 20% of board directions of fortune 500 companies and 1% CEOs while people of color represent much less than that. Now more than ever, diversity and inclusion are critical topics in workplaces around the world as the #METoo movement and #Timesup movements are currently placing spotlight on sexual harassment and abuse of power in many industries. Workplace diversity and inclusion is a very sensitive topic that encompasses many themes such as inclusive cultures, unconscious bias, as well as discrimination while focusing on groups of women, veterans, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBT professionals. Current efforts in the organization need to be implemented in our diverse culture to eliminate exclusion and implement inclusion.
Facebook is a large company that you would think from the outside looking in looks good but in fact it fails with African Americans, Hispanics, and Women on many aspects of diversity. I will be submitting my analysis of Facebook but let us first define what inclusion and diversity are to better understand the concept in retrospect. Diversity means being diverse or varied, and at work it means to have a workplace of two or more groups of employees with various racial, ethnic, gender, cultural, national, origin, handicap, age, and religious backgrounds. Today, because many Americans workplaces are already diverse the focus increasingly is managing diversity at the workplace. America is a country that was founded by many immigrant groups coming to the US and inhibiting its lands. It is interesting to point out however that this false narrative of the white man country and the “glass ceiling” has been rooted into our culture from the beginning. However, we are all human beings and there is no biological evidence that supports racial categories or classification based on race. This concept of race is very important in our lives as we are all part of the same species and there is genetic variation in human diversity as we are all human and therefore there is no legitimate scientific justification for race. The Second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence writes, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Our founding fathers created a foundation based on the concept of inclusion, equal rights, and freedom for all and not a system that divides and ranks humans based on race of diversity. However unfortunately in America racial classification provided a way to justify privilege and oppression by making inequality appear to be the result of natural differences.
Moreover, racial categories are politically charged, making these categories advantageous to some people and not others. Race has much to do with how we as human beings perceive, and judge people based upon what and how we are taught in the course of our lives. As humans we exhibit racism, ignorance, and hypocrisy based upon what we think is different from the norms that we are accustomed to. With this perception, we are afraid to expose and open up ourselves to learning more about others who physically look different than us, and thus isolate ourselves and minds to what we think we already know.
Inclusion is a state of being included, heard, and respected while at the same time valued and understood. “Inclusion should be reflected in a company’s culture and needs to start at the top and needs to be woven into the day-to-day operations”. An environment that is inclusive requires both individual diversity awareness skills and effective organizational systems that support diversity and inclusion. It also provides employees with a set of skills that allow them to deal effectively with workplace diversity. Stereotypes and prejudice such a discrimination or means of taking specific action against a person based on the person’s group should be avoided at all costs. Egocentrism or a tendency to view members of other social groups less favorably than one’s own needs to be prohibited because this creates stereotypes and other negative connotations that exacerbate inclusion and in fact create and strengthen the glass ceiling for the “white male race. ” This glass ceiling sets the rules of how things are structured in the corporate culture and as a consequence tokenism which appoints a small group of women or minorities to high profile positions rather than more aggressively seeking representation from that group.
I have experienced diversity and inclusion first had when coming to the United States at the age of six from Poland. I remember when I did not speak English and came into a foreign country where people were a lot more diverse than from where I was raised back in my native country. I was pretty fortunate enough to America as a child because it seems that as people get older, they start to develop prejudices and have their own perspectives based upon their life experiences. Luckily children are very open and curious about learning by having a positive attitude and outlook on life and this offered me an inclusive environment of going to school and being around teachers and students that were open to learn from me as much as I was willing to learn from them. I think the culture of being accepted and sharing more similarities and not judging by false prejudices or stereotypes had created a culture of opportunity to learn and grow from one another. While this group of children was more diverse than what I was accustomed to, this helped me flourish and develop quickly as this has provided me an inclusive safe environment that encouraged me to excel. I remember being very popular in school, as an athlete, excelling in school, and always loved to laugh and be a social butterfly with everyone. It seems that such an inclusive had provided me the backbone in making me the best individual that I strived to be at that age with wanting to be an astronaut when I would grow up.
I was excelling in both school and athletics and at the age of 11 I was sent off on a scholarship to the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida to live and play tennis in a boarding school I was a social butterfly back home in school but felt that the environment here was a lot different. The environment at the IMG academy was diverse but not inclusive. You had very wealthy kids from all different parts of the world, so you did definitely have a lot diversity but the culture of exclusivity, harassment, and competition in a “white men’s sport” was challenging to adopt even to call it an understatement. I remember the white privileged kids who probably never had their parents raise them, they would be the ones who would starts fights, steal, and do all the different crazy shit that you can imagine just like in the Lord of the Flies, and it was difficult for me at the age of 11 to understand this. I remember being moved around to different dormitories many times just like many of the other kids as it seems that we were not accepted because we were not the kids’ of wealthy Billionaires. This type of hostile and negative environment did have many repercussions on my well-being and my mental state especially more when coming back to Chicago at the age of fourteen. I remember seeing the friends that I always had from before and became more quiet and reserved as a person and not like the person that I always was. The emotional impact at such an early age played a major impact on my behaviors and how it fucked me up mentally. My personal story relates exactly back to the culture of corporations and in a globalized world where diversity is large, and inclusion has to be factored in as well to make it the best type of environment to encourage everyone to flourish.
Facebook as large of a company that it is has horrendous problems when it comes to diversity and inclusion in the workforce as they are hiring very few Black and Hispanic workers as evidenced by the reporting. “You can almost count on one hand the number of black women – six – who work as senior managers of executives at Facebook in the US accounting for less than 1% of those 769 jobs”. While the number of Hispanic women accounts to having 1. 3% of the jobs. According to the report Facebook employs 35% women, 5% Hispanics, and 3% Blacks, but it is important to note that women account to very limited roles in the jobs of top management within the company. Silicon Valley or the tech sector seems to show large deficits when it comes to hiring African-American and Hispanic women, who make up less than 1% of the workers, while the other industries are represented at much higher rates consistent with their proportion of the overall U. S population. From this data we can state that Facebook has diversity and inclusion problems.
To improve diversity and inclusion there has to be a major shift within the culture of the company to self-promote the ideas of all individuals. Facebook needs to increase diversity talent hiring, change the corporate structure by offering change from the top, and improve integration and inclusion in people’s practices by embracing a culture that embraces everyone’s strengths. Facebook needs to increase diversity by increasing their talent hiring as this faucet is very important and should not be overlooked. Diverse perspectives are more likely to generate new and different ideas. “An organization that truly promotes, encourages, and values diverse perspectives is better positioned to be innovative and become a market leader”. It also widens the talent pool by likely winning over top talent and thus improving performance, employee satisfaction, and retention. A workplace with a diverse group of individuals from different backgrounds enables a company to more effectively market to a broader group of consumers and tap into related business opportunities. Business reputation flourishes when a company shows its commitment to diversity and inclusion. It leads to more customers, increased profitability, and promotes innovative solutions and products. Making diversity work for the company requires managing diversity in other words, maximizing diversity’s potential advantages while minimizing the potential barriers such as prejudices and bias. Some good practices would be to have a Facebook representative on University campuses to educated potential employees of their inclusive environment and willingness to hire people from different backgrounds. Free workshops and get togethers such as webinars would be good to show that Facebook wants everyone to succeed in their company and educate its prospects on how its changes in polices have made for a more diverse and inclusive environment. Including such events in underprivileged neighborhoods would be beneficial in showing its support for the local community and might even generate some positive buzz about the company’s practices in the media. Facebook needs to improve integration and inclusion by embracing a culture that values everyone’s strengths. By excluding potential employees and discriminating in their hiring practices Facebook has faced some problems, “Employers are using Facebook to target job ads to men only, excluding women and anyone who identifies as another gender from employment opportunities, according to a complaint by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission”. By creating mechanisms by which employers elected to unlawfully target their advertisements based on gender and age. Users are required to select their gender when opening their Facebook account which opens the doors for employers that target their jobs ads based on their gender. In a very recent story dated from September 18, 2018, states that three women have filed a complaint with the EEOC and the Amercian Civil Liberties Union because they were unemployed because of such practices.
This needs to stop immediately and the main aim will be to make employees more sensitive to and better able to adapt to individual cultural changes. Women, racial ethnic minority groups, people with disabilities, and other minorities groups in the global workforce, need to be hired to promote to the current efforts of organization to reduce exclusion and foster inclusion. In order for the workforce to be competitive in today’s globalized society Facebook needs adopt this approach to be more successful. For diversity and inclusion to flourish and attracting a diverse and highly skilled workforce, Facebook needs to offer workplace flexibility, such as perhaps offering an option of staying on a partner track even while working part-time. To also make sure that benefits cover such things as family planning and prenatal care are very important and maintain a zero-tolerance for sexual harassment and discrimination.
