Accenture diversity report shows it’s doing better than many tech firms

9 Feb 2016

Accenture sign image via Accenture/Facebook

Accenture has become the first consultancy firm to release a diversity report, and from its findings, it seems it’s certainly doing better than many major tech companies.

The Accenture diversity report for 2015, which looks at the make-up of its US staff, comes following the necessary trend of recent years of larger tech companies – like Google, Facebook, Apple etc – publishing the breakdown of the race and gender of its US-based staff for transparency to encourage greater inclusion in what are still largely white-male-dominated companies.

Publishing the report online, Accenture’s breakdown of gender appears to show, overall, that the company is doing significantly better than the previously-mentioned tech companies, with 35.8pc of its employees being women.

Compare this with, say Google, which revealed in its most recent report that only 18pc of its technical staff were women.

In terms of race, well, the divide appears to be somewhat similar to other diversity reports published, with a hair’s breadth over half of Accenture’s staff being white, followed by Asian (33.6pc), black (7.4pc) and Hispanic (6.3pc), with the remainder being multi-racial, Pacific islander and Native American.

Accenture diversity

Accenture executives

Looking at an executive level, its breakdown on gender lines appears to be relatively similar to non-executive roles, with women taking 31.3pc of executive-level roles, however, a considerable majority of its executives are white (63.3pc).

Additionally, the company said that 1,450 of its employees – or 3pc of its workforce – has identified themselves as having a disability.

Speaking of the report, Accenture’s chief executive for North America, Julie Sweet, said that the company needs to improve its diversity: “While I am pleased with the progress we have made, we are not where we want to be. We need to find new ways to make an impact.

“Just as we collaborate with clients to help them win in the market, we need to collaborate more as an entire community to drive disruptive change.”

Correction

This article was amended on 9/2/16 to show that the number of black employees hired at Accenture is 7.4pc, not 6.3pc.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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