Companies that made pledges have fewer Black employees #BlackLivesMatter: An optics play for US firms?

After the murder of George Floyd last year prompted widespread protests, dozens of companies released public pledges to promote racial justice. However, their support of the Black community wasn't reflected in the demographics of their workforces.

A new study of diversity in the technology industry found companies that made statements of solidarity had 20 per cent fewer Black employees on average than those that didn't. The finding highlights a gap between what companies say about social issues and what they do in their own workplaces, said Stephanie Lampkin, the founder and chief executive officer of Blendoor, which conducted the study set to be published on Monday.

Blendoor, a startup that helps companies recruit a diverse group of candidates, crunched publicly available data on 240 of the most prominent tech companies. Despite the shortcomings of many companies that put out

Black Lives Matter statements, the pledges could have a serious impact. Their financial commitments surpassed $4.6 billion, more than double the amount of pledges made in the previous six years combined, according to the report.

Reviewing information released by companies over the past six years, Blendoor analysed trends in workplace diversity, inclusion policies and human-resources programmes, such as parental leave, flexible work arrangements and recruitment of underrepresented groups. It found, for example, that Pinterest Inc had the most robust policies and programmes for recruiting women; Mozilla Corp had the best for recruiting underrepresented minorities. McKesson Corp scored highest in Blendoor's rating of supporting women in leadership, while HP Inc tops the list for underrepresented minorities in leadership.

The analysis surfaced broader findings, as well, across hundreds of companies. Asian Americans have the widest gap between their representation in entry-level tech jobs and in leadership, and Asian-American women are the least likely to advance to executive roles. Women executives more commonly have C-level jobs that focus on areas such as HR, marketing or diversity, and those roles are among the least likely to be appointed to corporate boards. The analysis also found that 36 per cent of board directors are women or people of colour but that most of those are White women or Asian men.