Women represent 29.2% of Microsoft workforce globally

San Francisco, Nov 13 (IANS) Women today constitute 29.2 per cent of Microsoft’s workforce globally — an increase of 1.2 percentage points from 2018 — and at leadership levels, they currently represent 37 per cent of the company’s executives responsible for leading a geographic market, the company revealed in its first full “Diversity and Inclusion Report 2019”.

Asians account for 33.3 per cent of employees, up from 31.9 per cent last year.

The data reflects Microsoft family of companies, which includes employees from LinkedIn, GitHub, Compulsion, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, InXile, Obsidian Entertainment, and Undead Labs.

“Taken all together, our broader workforce has grown more than 27 per cent since 2016 before we acquired these companies, and we saw an overall employee population growth of 9.7 per cent from 2018 to 2019,” said the report that came out on Tuesday.

In the US, women earn $1.001 for every $1 earned by their counterparts who are men, and racial and ethnic minorities earn $1.006 for every $1 earned by their white counterparts.

“As we expanded our equal pay data to include data on women and men from the US plus the five largest markets outside the U.S. “collectively representing about 80 per cent of our workforce” we see that women in those combined geographies earn $0.999 for every $1.000 by their counterparts who are men,” explained Lindsay-Rae McIntyre – Chief Diversity Officer, Microsoft.

“At Microsoft, we are committed to the principle of equal pay for equal work for our employees and strive to pay employees equally for substantially similar work,” she added.

The Microsoft Inclusion Index, shared publicly for the first time, reflects that 88 per cent of employees agree that they experience positive aspects of inclusion at Microsoft.

“With our scale and global reach, this is a positive indicator, but we know we have a responsibility to engage those who are not part of that 88 per cent,” McIntyre added.

Microsoft now have business activity in 190 countries and more than 144,000 employees worldwide.

“Through acquisitions such as LinkedIn, GitHub, and our game studios, and through the growth of our businesses such as Azure and AI, our broader workforce has grown more than 27 per cent since 2016.

“Without those minimally integrated companies, more than 50 per cent of our Microsoft workforce has been with the company five years or less,” said McIntyre.

In technical roles alone, Microsoft has 49 per cent more women, 48 per cent more Hispanic/Latinx, and 67 per cent more African American/Black employees than three years ago.