By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
These days there are a lot of talks about the necessity to support diversity in our society. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced sweeping changes in the company’s approach to diversity. GOOGL stock reacted with a slight growth.
Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock prices have risen in the last trading season. Sources say that CEO Sundar Pichai revealed in a blog post that the company was introducing greater diversity in its leadership structure.
This follows weeks of protests that have occurred across the United States and the World. The protests were part of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. They started when Policeman Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in a knee-lock chokehold.
Yesterday Alphabet (GOOGL) stock price rose to $1,452.54 (+0.42%). In the pre-market, GOOGL is slightly down (-0.037%). The market cap is currently $990.27 billion.
Alphabet (GOOGL) Stock Price Up as Moves Are Made to Encourage Diversity
Alphabet has indicated that it is making these changes to fight racism. The company stated its goal to increase under-represented minority groups in leadership positions by 30%. This target is for 2025.
Sundar Pichai said:
“Today we are announcing a set of concrete commitments to move that work forward: internally, to build sustainable equity for Google’s Black+ community, and externally, to make our products and programs helpful in the moments that matter most to Black users”.
Alphabet also plans to increase investments in locations like Chicago, Atlanta Washington DC, and London. The company said that it had offices there.
The strategy employed will be to recruit “more underrepresented Googlers”. This will be in places where social systems encourage improvements in life. Such an approach is aimed at building within an existing framework. This will also allow for intergenerational change to occur across the board.
Alphabet is focused on improving its talent pool by hiring a new Talent Liason. This will help to improve the diversity of the pool. This is to enable the underrepresented groups to make progress within the company.
Pressure to Diversify
It seems that Alphabet is bowing to pressure to diversify. This move comes after years of pressure to do so. Google’s recent diversity report clearly shows an underrepresentation of minorities. 67.5% of all human resources are Male. This is a slight drop from 69.3% in 2014.3.5% of its technology human resources are black. This is an increase of 1.5% in 2014.
As of 2014, Alphabet had 53,000 resources. This year the company has 120,000. This steady increase hasn’t reflected a substantial increase in diversity. If the trend continues, the company may face increased scrutiny by Googlers across the world.
Sundar Pichai has also indicated that the company will assist black users. One of such measures is to add a “black-owned business” badge on the profile on merchants in the United States. This will be on the business profile of the business. Users will also be able to find the business location via Google Maps.
Financial Incentives Are Included
The company has also put together financial incentives to assist black businesses, black-owned startups, and employees. Its recent $100 million fund for Black content creators on YouTube is one such example.
Another is an increased investment in Plexo Capital. There is also a separate $175 million that includes $50 million in grants for black-owned small businesses. $100 million will be used in funding activities for investment firms, startups, and other setups that support black entrepreneurs.
Google has also called for applications to its Google for Startups Accelerator for Black founders. This is coming from Jewel Burke and her team at Google for startups.
Alphabet is also investing $15 million in job training. This will be done via the national Urban League. $10 million has been set aside to “help improve the Black community’s access to education, equipment and economic opportunities in our developer ecosystem, and increase equity, representation and inclusion” within the Google developer ecosystem.
Critics have said that these moves are small compared with the company’s size. It is a step in the right direction for one of the world’s largest technology companies. It is expected that others will play their part as well.
Way to go Sundar.