Years after advocating for more inclusive policies at the workplace, Alphabet-owned Google is scrapping its goal of hiring more employees from underrepresented groups, reported Reuters.
The tech giant has also said it will review diversity-based hiring programmes to align with US President Donald Trump‘s stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes.
“In 2020, we set aspirational hiring goals and focused on growing our offices outside California and New York to improve representation,” Reuters quoted Fiona Cicconi, Alphabet’s chief people officer’s email to staff on Wednesday. “…but in the future, we will no longer have aspirational goals,” Cicconi added in the mail.
Google‘s been reviewing its diversity programmes over the past few years, and as a federal contractor, the company is considering bringing changes in alignment with recent executive orders, said the company in its statement.
“We’ve updated our 10-k language to reflect this, and as a federal contractor, our teams are also evaluating changes required following recent court decisions and executive orders on this topic,” Google said in its statement, according to The Guardian.
Donald Trump’s order on diversity, equity, and inclusion
Hours after taking over as the President of the United States, Donald Trump signed an order to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes across the federal government. He also directed a review of federal grants to ensure they are not used to support similar DEI initiatives.
Google had for years been among the most vocal companies pushing for more inclusive policies in the wake of protests against the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020.
Google CEO set goal to have 30% more leaders from underrepresented groups
In 2020, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company had set a goal to hire 30 per cent more leaders from underrepresented groups by 2025.
In 2021, it began to evaluate executive performance on team diversity and inclusion after a prominent leader of artificial intelligence research said the company abruptly fired her after she criticised its diversity efforts.