Shamontiel L. Vaughn
Although the coronavirus pandemic slowed down Google’s progress, the multinational technology company is at it again. Their plan is to “bring more jobs and investments to diverse communities as part of our previously announced racial equity commitments,” according to Sundar Pichai, Google CEO.
From 2018 to 2020, the company dealt with controversy surrounding accusations of being “anti-conservative” while simultaneously facing backlash for cutting Sojourn (a racial justice program created for employees to learn about implicit bias, and to discuss race and inequality). NBC reports that their rationale for ending Sojourn was because it was too difficult to scale globally due to its focus on racism in the United States. However, Google is revamping to try to diversify their organization in the U.S. again.
CNBC confirms that Google is spending more than $7 billion on real estate across the U.S., in addition to job expansion. Google’s business goal includes “thousands” of jobs in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. In addition to Seattle, there are also planned offices coming in Houston and Mississippi.
Although tech jobs can largely be done remotely, Google plans to create in-office jobs that meet approximately three days per week, starting in September. In addition to jobs offered all across the United States and largely in India and the Philippines for the Google Operations Center, the company appears to have had a change of heart when it comes to community organizations. This time though, they’ve expanded to include more non-U.S. groups, too.
According to their website, there are 16 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) with more than 250 chapters globally, “providing community, personal and professional development opportunities for Googlers from underrepresented communities.” Some of those community groups include Africans@ Google, Hispanic Googlers Network (HOLA), Black Googlers Network, Gayglers (for the LGBTQ+ community), Google American Indian Network, Indus Google Network, Iranian Googlers, Disability Alliance and more.
“We need a workforce that’s more representative of our users, and a workplace that creates a sense of belonging for everyone,” the company wrote in their Google Diversity Annual Report 2020.
