By Margenett Moore-Roberts, Global Head of Inclusive Diversity
I am excited to announce the creation of Yahoo’s newest Employee Resource Group (ERG) focused on Neurodiversity, spearheaded by Margaux Joffe, Yahoo’s Head of Production, Global Marketing Department. The ERG’s mission is to champion neurodiversity at Yahoo in order to create an inclusive workplace for minds of all kinds.
If you’re unfamiliar, neurodiversity refers to differences in learning and attention as normal variations of the human brain. At Yahoo, we recognize minds of all kinds and respect all forms of human variations – from dyslexia, to ADHD, to the autistic spectrum and more. In partnership with Yahoo’s Office of Inclusive Diversity (OID), the new Neurodiversity ERG will help encourage that anyone with these differences can utilize their strengths at work and thrive through one another’s support, as well as supports OID’s mission of advancing diversity and inclusion in Yahoo’s workforce, workplace and marketplace.
Margaux is the chair of the program and her passion stems from her personal experience in being diagnosed with ADHD three years ago, when she was well into adulthood. She felt compelled to found the Kaleidoscope Society, an empowerment project for women with ADHD which shines a light on inspiring stories of trailblazing women with ADHD for its more than 700 members. After joining Yahoo and talking to the OID about their commitment to creating an inclusive working environment, she proposed the idea of creating a Neurodiversity ERG in order to extend the OID’s efforts to colleagues (like herself) with neurological differences.
The ERG is hitting the ground running, and the first internal campaign is introducing poster series and screens in all offices globally to highlight the strengths associated with a few neurological differences such as Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and OCD. The ERG will also meet regularly to provide support to relevant members of the Yahoo community and collaborate on how to grow and bring awareness to their mission. Four initial focuses of the program include: learning the needs of employees, creating a community of support, providing resources at Yahoo and increasing the cultural competency of managers so they can effectively manage their diverse teams.
In the coming months, the ERG will work with the OID and Human Resources to ensure Neurodiversity is incorporated into our Inclusion strategy and our manager competencies.
It’s that time of year again, when people from all over the world descend on Austin for SXSW. We hope to see y’all out and about in Austin, but before you fill up on BBQ, make sure you swing by and check out the Yahoos who will be speaking this year.
We’ll be covering topics ranging from app accessibility and bots, to cyber security and women and diversity. We’re also proud to announce our very own Yahoo Music Editor, Lyndsey Parker, is being honored at the Monster Energy Women’s Ultra Mixer on Friday, March 17. And did we mention Tumblr CEO and Founder, David Karp, will be chatting all things activism?
By Margenett Moore-Roberts, Global Head of Inclusive Diversity
Pay equity is a critical and inextricable component of Yahoo’s mission to build an inclusive and diverse workplace. I am incredibly proud that we have joined more than 100 other companies in signing The White House Equal Pay Pledge.
By Margenett Moore-Roberts, Global Head of Inclusive Diversity
With more than one billion unique users across the world each month, Yahoo has a distinct opportunity to leverage the power of our platforms to support and advance inclusion around the globe. We recognize that building an inclusive and diverse workplace requires more than just a theoretical goal, and we view inclusion as a mission-critical business imperative that we must address with the same level of urgency and commitment that we apply to our other strategic initiatives. We believe that our differences are what bring us together, drive innovation and propel us forward, and we’re proud of the actions we are taking to set a high standard of inclusion across the company, industry and the world.
We’re thrilled to announce that Yahoo has scored a perfect 100% on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index for the tenth year in a row, making Yahoo a ‘Best Place to Work’ for LGBTQ employees!
Working at Yahoo means you get equal benefits regardless of your sexual orientation. It means that you can come to work every day and know that you are accepted and celebrated for who you are. Yahoo is proud to support all of our colleagues who are part of or allies of the LGBTQ community, and to facilitate discussion and dialog for the important issues facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning community.
We’re honored the Human Rights Campaign has recognized our amazing company for ten years in a row.
Yahoo, with more than one billion unique users across the world each month, has a distinct opportunity to leverage the power of our platforms to advance inclusion and diversity at the company, and across the tech industry. We recognize that building an inclusive and diverse workplace is more than a theoretical goal. It’s a mission-critical business imperative that we must address with the same level of urgency and commitment that we apply to other strategic initiatives.
In the second quarter of 2016, we established the Office of Inclusive Diversity, led by Margenett Moore-Roberts, to help galvanize and align efforts around these initiatives. The team works across the organization to develop strategies to help ensure we have the right set of perspectives represented across our corporate community to effectively serve our broad and varied user base. We are focused on leveraging the power of inclusion and diversity to unlock and maximize value for our users, our advertisers, and, ultimately, our company.
Early focus for the Office of Inclusive Diversity has been on assessing and diagnosing current culture, and on fortifying the Yahoo-specific business case for inclusion and diversity. A Strategic Inclusive Diversity Council has been formed to identify and drive inclusion-related initiatives, including defining corporate values, success metrics and new business practices that optimize inclusion. Work is being done to restructure key processes to maximize pipeline flow for underrepresented groups and ensure hiring, promotion and retention programs are fully-inclusive. Employee focused programs have been established to increase understanding about inclusive diversity and how to use that knowledge to positively impact our business.
We are proud to have been recognized in 2015-2016 for our strides in paving the way for gender equality (Watermark Index Award winner), for being a best place to work for LGBTQ employees (scoring 100% on Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index for the tenth year in a row), for being a best place to work for parents (named by Elle Magazine and Fatherly.com), and by being named as an employer whose work significantly impacts communication access for people with hearing loss (receiving the National Access Award by the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA)).
Our 2016 Diversity Report
In-line with current industry practice, our 2016 Diversity report shares data for gender on a global basis, and data for race/ethnicity for the U.S. only. Beyond these metrics, Yahoo fully embraces additional dimensions of diversity, including people with disabilities, military veterans, the LGBTQ community, diverse religions, working parents and other groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in corporate environments.
As of June 2016, women make up 37% of Yahoo’s global overall workforce. Whites and Asians make up 89% of the total U.S. workforce, while Blacks, Hispanics, Multi-racials, and Others (Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, Pacific Islanders) make up the remaining 11%.
We have strong female representation in our non-Technical workforce, 56% globally, and we’re focused on the opportunity to increase the representation of women in our Technical and Leadership categories. We are also focused on increasing racial and ethnic diversity across all workforce categories in order to ensure we have a deep and authentic understanding of the diverse audiences our advertisers want to reach. We have a clear opportunity to increase representation for these groups in order to better inform, connect, and entertain these audiences.
We remain committed to sharing updates on the progress we make toward our goal of cultivating a corporate community that reflects the broad and varied perspectives of the world we aspire to serve.
