Ericsson released its annual diversity figures on Monday, revealing a workforce at the old-guard mobile telecom equipment company that in some ways is much less diverse than the younger tech firms that have recently released such data under pressure to own-up to an industry-wide diversity crisis.
Ericsson, which is based in Sweden but has a significant and growing Silicon Valley presence, employs a smaller percentage of women than any company that has thus far released diversity data, with women making up just 22 percent of the global workforce. The company has set a goal for how many women it would like to employee by the year 2020 — it is the first company to publicly announce specific hiring goals. But that goal of 30 percent would mean that in 2020 Ericsson aims to have employ a smaller percentage of female workers than many companies — including Yahoo, Facebook and Hewlett Packard — do today.
The company’s 20 percent of women in technical positions (which includes all research and development jobs) was slightly better than the 18 percent average of companies that have thus far released their data. Its percentage of women in leadership roles, 18 percent, was on the low end.
Ericsson reported that it has 3 percent Latino employees and 2 percent black among its U.S. technical workforce, on par with the numbers most companies have so far released.
About a dozen tech companies have made diversity data public after Google was the first to do so in May, an effort to address criticisms that Silicon Valley is alarmingly male and either white or Asian, with many barriers to coveted high-tech jobs for women and minorities.
Ericsson has for several years released data as part of an annual report, but said this year it chose to release more detailed data in acknowledgement of the industry’s diversity problem.
“Ericsson recognizes it is part of an industry where steps need to be taken to speed up slow – and in some cases even negative – development in certain areas relating to diversity,” the company said in a statement. “Almost any way you look at it, or in any country – Ericsson operates in 180 – the information and communications technology (ICT) industry is not diverse enough.”
Broad patterns are beginning to emerge from the data. Typically, companies with women in highly visible leadership positions have had the most female workers. And older companies, such as Apple and Hewlett Packard, have been more racially diverse.
Bina Chaurasia, Ericsson’s chief of human resources, said that the company has been working hard to diversify, especially in bringing more women into the company.
She noted that the company’s executive leadership team has grown to 25 percent women over the past five years, though in reality that 25 percent is made up of just four women (it was one before).
She said that pledging to have a workforce of 30 percent women both in the U.S. and globally was a “bold” step, though that number would still put Ericsson well below national labor averages, in which women make up just over half of the workforce.
“Short of doing crazy things you would not hit a number greater than 30 percent women,” she said. “We think it’s an ambitious and aggressive number for us.”
The company has also set no such hiring goals for minorities, though its percentage of black and Latino workers remains far from the 13 percent of blacks and 17 percent of Latinos that make up the national workforce.
