What you need to know
- Microsoft is the top-ranked company on this year's Fortune 500 list on diversity and inclusion.
- This year's list includes data from Measure Up, a ranking of progressive companies.
- Almost 40% of Microsoft's board and 50% of its staff are racial and ethnic minorities
Microsoft regularly discusses the importance of diversity and inclusion, whether that be about Pride, race, ethnicity, gender, or people with disabilities. The company appears to be backing its words up with action, because it is the top-ranked company on this year's Fortune 500 list in terms of diversity and inclusion.
Fortune and Refinitiv partnered together to gather data and rank organizations based on 14 key metrics, including the percentage of minorities on a company's board, the percentage of employees that are women, and the percentage of employees with disabilities. This list also includes Measure Up, a ranking of the most progressive companies based on diversity and inclusivity.
Microsoft measures well in several key areas. Fortune highlights that it provides day-care services and has an employee resource group voluntarily formed by workers. The company also has targets for diversity and inclusion and policies regarding gender diversity.
According to Fortune, 39.7% of Microsoft's board is made up of racial and ethnic minorities. Overall, Microsoft's workforce is 49.8% racial or ethnic majorities. 41.3% of managers at Microsoft are racial or ethnic minorities.
While Microsoft has positive figures regarding racial and ethnic diversity, it falls behind in gender diversity. According to 2020 data reported by Microsoft, only 28.6% of its employees were women. 26.3% of managers at Microsoft were women in the same timeframe.
The data for Fortune's list is from 2020 when available and 2019 at the earliest. In the case of Microsoft, all data highlighted in this article is from 2020.
