A just released report titled, Action to Catalyze Tech (ACT), is spurring on the tech industry to take substantive actions in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The report is the product of a cross-industry working group formed by the Aspen Institute, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), PwC, and Snap Inc. that offers businesses research-based actions that they can enact to meaningfully improve DEI outcomes.
Twenty-nine leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) experts from academia and the tech industry worked together on the tech diversity report for over a year as part of the Catalyze Tech initiative. The group’s core tenant is that change in DEI will only come through collective action of the leading tech companies and that actions taken singularly do bring the necessary change.
The group’s Action to Catalyze Tech report seeks tech companies to “commit to bold, collective action by open-sourcing DEI best practices, encouraging collaboration on systemic solutions, and increasing accountability to drive change”.
Thirty plus founding signatories of the ACT Report that includes CEOs and executives from major tech organizations such as Airbnb, Apple, Dropbox, Etsy, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Salesforce, and others pledged to hold themselves and their big tech companies accountable for embracing actions that would accelerate progress in DEI. The now published tech diversity report gives them a blueprint and tools, regardless of company stage, to drive internal and sector-wide change—potentially impacting the over 500,000 tech employees of the signatories.
“The tech industry remains dominated by white men,” said Vivian Schiller, Executive Director of Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen Institute. “Justice for underrepresented communities requires sustained commitment, transparency, and accountability from leadership, and that’s what we strive toward with Catalyze Tech.”
The Report provides four key recommendations as a foundation for each signatory company to develop their own specific strategies that act upon their public commitment that will lead to changes in an industry historically dominated by white and male employees.
. As stated in the tech diversity report’s announcement, the recommendations are:
- Model and incentivize inclusive leadership, including by recognizing DEI as a business imperative.
- Operationalize DEI throughout the business by applying a framework to address how to spend money (supplier diversity), design and build products (product inclusion), and think about talent.
- Share DEI demographic data with a new industry partner, the Tech Equity Accountability Mechanism, incubated by the Aspen Institute, with the goal of creating industry-wide standards for reporting such data.
- Transform future pathways into tech for underrepresented talent, including by helping solve the acute lack of computer science teachers from underrepresented backgrounds.
The call to action initiated by the diversity report for each tech company offers a path to address a challenge that has long plagued the tech industry that excludes women and people of color. Studies are now showing that companies that have diverse talent, particularly in leadership positions, perform very well against those who are not.
“Increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion is more than a numbers game. True change occurs when company leaders remove the systemic biases and barriers to fostering inclusive organizational cultures,” said Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder, NCWIT. “It is imperative that we continue to call upon tech companies to take action, and contribute to making the tech industry a more accurate reflection of a broad society.”
Taking one step further Catalyze Tech holds its first annual DEI Innovation Summit on November 3rd, bringing together CEOs and leaders from signatory companies, DEI experts, and advocates. The virtual Summit is free and will focus on cross-industry alignment and how best to execute the report’s recommendations to address how to increase underrepresented groups in their tech employee base.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion must be treated with the same prioritization, investment and rigor as other C-Suite priorities — it demands collaboration, accountability and transparency to help accelerate systemic and sustainable change,” said Shannon Schuyler, Chief Purpose & Inclusion Officer at PwC US. “The commitments laid out in the ACT report strive to do just that, from the talent we hire, to the suppliers we work with, to the products we create — inspiring a culture of belonging should be felt through every corner of an organization if we are to drive change at scale.”
The tech diversity report that will be explored at the upcoming summit offers some concrete, yet very early steps in addressing a challenge that has long plagued the tech industry that will lead to a more diverse and inclusive technical workforce.
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