Dawn Jones
Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer
Vice President of Social Impact
It has been a year since I started my current role. I have been fortunate to work even more closely with our incredible team to shape the diversity, inclusion and social impact work happening across the company, while also being able to update some of our processes.
The evolving global pandemic and impact of the "Great Resignation" has been a challenge. Women and underrepresented populations have considered leaving the workplace or changed jobs at a record rate. Witnessing this across the industry has helped me understand the deep value of fostering a culture focused on flexibility, inclusion and respect for employees.
More: Corporate Responsibility Report Letter from Intel's CEO
In addition, I have increasingly realized how integral diversity and inclusion are to broader corporate responsibility efforts. For example, climate change disproportionally affects people of color in the United States, making it even more critical to understand those intersectional dynamics and what contributes to them. That is why we decided to combine the launch of our 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report with the release of our diversity and inclusion (D+I) data to provide a comprehensive overview of our efforts while keeping the detailed breakdown of data on our D+I website. This paints the entire picture of what needs to be addressed and allows for a holistic approach since D+I is integral to our broader Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) work.
Our Workforce and Pay Data
For the first time, we have integrated all Intel workforce population data into the 2022 Corporate Responsibility report. We have also added two new population categories, "2 or More" ethnicities and "Other,” which allows us to more accurately depict the entirety of our company’s representation. It’s important to note that with this change, and the increase in global hiring, some underrepresented populations have seen a slight decline in percentage even if absolute numbers increased.
We also released our 2020 and 2021 U.S. pay data, using the EEO-1 format for the third time. While the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) does not require employers to file EEO-1 pay data for this timeframe, in the spirit of transparency we felt it was important to not only continue to collect the data, but to disclose it publicly. We are also sharing the results of our internal inclusion survey publicly for the first time, which gives us deeper insight into how employees are experiencing Intel.
Our 2021 U.S. workforce and 2020 and 2021 pay data key findings include:
- Regarding our U.S. pay data, salaries for women trended at or slightly higher than men within the higher pay bands showing improvement from the previous year.
- The percentage of underrepresented populations in senior leadership positions increased from 7.6% to 7.8%. This is an increase of 384 to 444 in absolute numbers.
- Our veteran representation has remained relatively flat year over year, moving from 7.3% to 7.2%, while the count of employees who identify as veterans increased by roughly 150. This difference is explained by Intel’s unprecedented growth.
- We surpassed our milestone goal of reaching 1,375 women in leadership roles, ending the year with 1,449 women in senior leadership roles across the globe. Although the absolute number of women leaders increased, the relative representation of women leaders decreased 0.1 percentage point due to the overall growth of the company.
- Our global representation of technical women declined from 25.2% to 24.3%. However, it is important to note that we fine-tuned how we measure technical workers to align with the industry. Additionally, this decline is partly attributed to our robust hiring and growth. Therefore, we now have approximately 26,000 technical women working at Intel, which is the highest number we have had since we started reporting our diversity data.
- In 2021, 90% of employees reported, “I am treated with dignity and respect at work,” a 2% increase year over year, and “Intel makes it easy for people from diverse backgrounds to fit in and be accepted,” a 3% increase in favorable responses year over year.
While the total number of women in our workforce has increased this year as we grew our employee population, we know we must address the 0.9 percentage point decline in relative representation of women in technical roles. To help meet our 2030 goal of increasing representation of women in technical roles to 40%, we plan, in part, to implement targeted programs to increase the number of women hired for technician, engineering hardware and software roles through sourcing, pipelining and workforce development initiatives.
Further, we have set a goal to ensure hiring for technical entry-level roles is at least 30% women in 2022. We believe it’s critical to bring our employees along in this effort, so we have also set this as one of our companywide annual performance bonus goals.
Alliance for Global Inclusion
It’s also been a year since we launched the Alliance for Global Inclusion. This coalition aims to improve diversity and inclusion practices and promote transparent reporting in four critical areas: leadership representation, inclusive language, inclusive product development and STEM readiness in underserved communities. D+I cannot be solved by one company alone. It requires all of us working together.
I am very proud of the collaboration with these partner companies to drive substantial change including:
- Doubling in size and welcoming new members: Applied Materials, Lam Research, Micron, Equinix and TEL US. This group joins founding members Intel, Snap Inc., Nasdaq, Dell Technologies and NTT DATA.
- Launching our second global inclusion index survey to business leaders across industries. The full results will be released this summer and highlight insights on current diversity and inclusion practices and areas for improvement across all industries.
- Publishing suggested guidance to increase diverse representation on boards of directors.
Where We Go From Here
While I am encouraged by the progress we’re making, there are still opportunities to do more. We remain committed to accelerating outcomes through our 2030 goals, including increasing the number of women in technical roles to 40%, doubling the number of women and underrepresented minorities in senior leadership roles, advancing accessibility and increasing the percentage of employees who self-identify as having a disability to 10% of our workforce, and ensuring inclusive leadership practices are embedded in our global culture.
Additionally, the Alliance for Global Inclusion plans to create suggested guidance to increase diverse representation in the C-suite at all companies, identify the next set of terminology in its inclusive language work, develop a way to implement processes that enable AI collaboration to address bias in HR systems and deploy an integrated effort to positively impact the computer science teachers pipeline while increasing access to STEM job opportunities for underrepresented groups with non-traditional pathways.
Over the next year, we will continue to invest in programs and initiatives that advance our inclusion goals and create industrywide change with our alliance partners.
Dawn Jones is chief diversity and inclusion officer and vice president of social impact at Intel Corporation.