LinkedIn released a report on the diversity of its workforce, revealing that their employees are mostly male and mostly white.
The professional social networking company showed that in terms of gender, 61 percent of its employees are male. In terms of ethnicity, 53 percent are white and 38 percent are Asian.
LinkedIn's publishing of its workforce diversity report at the company's official blog comes in the heels of Google releasing a similar report. Google said that 70 percent of its workforce are male, 61 percent are white and 30 percent are Asian.
LinkedIn has over 5,400 employees that are spread in offices located from California to Brazil to India. While the report's data on gender encompasses all of the company's offices worldwide, the data on ethnicity is only for the U.S. The company said that this is due to legal difficulties that do not allow it to inquire on the ethnicity details of their employees in several countries,.
"We're not where we'd like to be," said LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner at Thomas Friedman's Next New World Conference. "We want and can do better than [what we're doing]."
LinkedIn has in place several initiatives that the company hopes will improve workforce diversity. These are a partnership with Year Up, which provides experience and support to urban young adults to close the gap in terms of opportunities; a partnership with the Anita Borg Institute, which is an organization that is focused on women in the computing industry; support for Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, which looks to put a stop to the discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees; support for Management Leadership for Tomorrow, which provides African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics with what they need to unlock their potential; and pioneering DevelopHer, which is an annual women's hackday that engages and supports women in the tech industry.
"Ultimately, what we want is the best technical talent in the world to work at LinkedIn regardless of identity," a spokesperson for LinkedIn told Mashable. "A bigger part of the issue for us is doing what we can to increase the talent pool. That's not the sort of thing that will pay off immediately, but that's something we believe will pay off for the entire industry over time."
"We may not be the first company to be transparent, and we hope we won't be the last. Our goal is to improve over time and to make a lasting change at LinkedIn. Let's challenge each other to make it a more inclusive world in which we work," the company concluded its blog post.
