Across The New York Times, 43 percent of new hires in 2019 identified as people of color, according to the company’s latest diversity report for 2019.
The breakdown reflects New York Times’ fair progress in diversifying staff across gender, race and ethnicity. At the leadership level, inclusivity is growing, but still has a ways to go; people of color now represent 21 percent of leadership roles, up from 16 percent in 2015. Women, on the other hand, now represent 49 percent of leadership, up from 40 percent in 2015.
Representation among staff overall has improved. People of color now account for 32 percent of New York Times staff and women represent 51 percent of staff.
Despite the advancements, white employees still dominate staff and leadership roles, representing 65 percent of all staff, down from 73 percent in 2015, and 76 percent of leadership, down from 83 percent in 2015.
The company admits it still has gaps in representation at the leadership level and explained its ongoing initiatives in 2019 to bridge that gap. In terms of hiring, it says it relies on diverse panels to assess diverse slates of job candidates and provides hiring managers with tools to remove bias from job descriptions.
To ensure pay equity, the New York Times conducts pay reviews every two years and reviews promotion and retention data at least quarterly.
Examples of how the publication has sought to foster a more inclusive culture include adding gender-neutral bathrooms to its offices in New York and London, in response to staff requests; incorporating inclusion and belonging in trainings on unconscious bias; encouraging senior executives to hold regular discussions on progress and challenges across the company; and implementing regular town halls and Q&As with company and department leaders, with more ways for employees to share feedback, like office hours and smaller forums.
Google is faring much worse in reaching a racially just workplace. According to its seventh consecutive diversity report, released in early May, the percentage of black hires in the US in 2019 was 5.5 percent, up by just 0.7 percent from 2018.
