Google to increase spending on diversity initiatives, continue expanding its programs

Google is looking to continue its push to make its workforce and the tech industry as a whole more diverse, the company wrote in a blog post today.  Google is looking to spend $150 million on a campaign to increase diversity. In 2014, the company spent $115 million on diversity initiatives.

It’s not just the money that Google is dedicating to diversity, however. Google’s vice president of people operations Nancy Lee told USA Today that the company is very much taking a “holistic” strategy to make the tech industry more diverse and representative of the populations it serves. The increased and rapid spending on Google’s part does, however, highlight the urgency and importance of its diversity initiatives.

Google VP of people operating Nancy Lee says:

“Our strategy is extremely long term. Sure, we are doing things that can show an impact maybe this year, maybe next year. But we recognize that there is not enough talent entering into our industry and that we have a lot of work to do.”

One of Google’s diversity related initiatives concerns the schools from which it recruits employees. In the past, Google has usually recruited from roughly 100 different schools, but now the company pulls employees from more than 200 schools. The only criteria, Google says, is that a school have a rigorous computer science program.

Google has also increased the number of women software engineers it’s recruiting to 22 percent. That’s 4 percent higher than the national rate, Google claims. Other initiatives within Google include the opportunity for Google employees to dedicate 20 percent of its time to work on diversity projects through Diversity Core, as well as attended seminars on unconscious bias.

More details regarding Google’s ramped up diversity efforts are available on the official Google blog.