Microsoft’s diversity director studies smaller companies

That’s according to Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft’s chief diversity officer and corporate vice president of talent and learning. to wealthAt the Impact Initiative in Atlanta, Ga., on Tuesday, McIntyre explained that she and other senior Microsoft leaders are eager to learn from younger companies that can be more nimble in their inclusion and accessibility efforts. Those learnings, she said, help the company build and keep a competitive workforce.

“I often look at smaller organizations to see how they innovate with less legacy or less history, because they can do innovative and creative things that big companies can’t,” McIntyre said. “It’s really this exchange of information and kind of wisdom and creativity that I think keeps the conversation fresh.”

McIntyre spoke with Charlotte Burrows, Chair of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Beck Bailey, Accenture’s Global Chief Diversity Officer. Bailey added that Accenture is making efforts to collaborate with other companies and organizations on topics such as diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

“It’s a space where the natural competition of companies can be suppressed a little bit because we’re invested in what’s good for society as well as our businesses,” Bailey said.

The trio noted that despite gains in diversity and inclusion in the tech space, women and minorities remain disproportionately underrepresented in the workforce. Put another way: A recent EEOC report found that as of 2022, women make up just 22.6 percent of high-tech roles — that is, those closely related to science, technology, engineering, and math — barely budging from 22 percent which they comprised in 2005. This despite the fact that women make up almost half of the total US workforce.

All three speakers work to provide opportunities for those underrepresented groups. McIntyre noted that women comprise 27 percent of technology roles at Microsoft and 31 percent of the company as a whole, higher than industry averages. She says achieving these percentages required consistent efforts that the company plans to continue despite the broader political backlash against DEIA initiatives.

She also stressed the importance of looking after employees once they start working at your company. Inclusion efforts are questionable if employees do not feel respected and valued and continue to do good work in the sector. Accenture’s Bailey added that it was important to listen to the needs of employees to keep them in the workforce, which could include instituting policies such as better parental leave and flexible working and “anything that will really help them thrive”.

“Everyone does better if they feel respected and valued at work and given that
those tools to really contribute,” said the EEOC’s Burrows. “We’ve seen it time and time again, our mission makes it easier to bring people in … but to keep them there and make them feel valued in their contribution, that takes more.”