Racial Diversity: There’s More Work to be Done in the Workplace

By Terri Williams

Racial diversity in the workplace – from recruiting to hiring to promoting people of color – continues to move at an unimpressive pace. And if LinkedIn’s annual workplace diversity report is any indication, the needle is moving so slowly that it appears to be broken. Among the company’s 6,435 employees, 5 per cent are Latino, and 3 per cent are Black, representing only a 1 per cent increase over the previous year. LinkedIn’s leadership is 3 per cent Latino and 1 per cent Black.

The company’s diversity report is particularly disturbing because according to LinkedIn’s own stats, it has 433 million registered users, with two new members joining the social networking site every second. It’s safe to assume that LinkedIn has access to more potential employee profiles than any other organization, which begs the question: If it can’t find suitable candidates of color among hundreds of millions of profiles, who can?