Google (GOOGL-7.81%) will reportedly stop setting targets for hiring historically underrepresented groups.
The tech giant said in an email to staff on Wednesday that it will no longer set hiring goals to improve workplace diversity, the Wall Street Journal (NWS+0.56%) reported. The company also reportedly told staff it is reviewing some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs after recent court decisions and President Donald Trump’s executive order to end DEI programs in the federal government. Google told staff it is “evaluating changes to our programs required to comply,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020, the company set a hiring goal to increase the share of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” at Google by 30% by this year.
“Listening to the personal accounts of members of our Black Advisory Leadership Group and our Black+ Googlers has only reinforced for me the reality our Black communities face: one where systemic racism permeates every aspect of life, from interactions with law enforcement, to access to housing and capital, to health care, education, and the workplace,” Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai had said in a memo to staff, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In the note on Wednesday, Google reportedly told staff it will “continue to invest in states across the U.S.—and in many countries globally—but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals.” Underrepresented staff will reportedly still have access to Google’s resource groups.
“We’re committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities, and over the last year we’ve been reviewing our programs designed to help us get there,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement shared with Quartz. “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.”
The company joins fellow tech giants Meta (META+0.27%) and Amazon (AMZN-2.51%), which have both made significant changes to diversity efforts. Meta shut down its diversity team last month, for example, with Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources, telling employees that “the legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing.”
Meanwhile, Google recently updated its AI Principles to allow the company to work on military applications for AI.
Google said it will implement “appropriate human oversight, due diligence, and feedback mechanisms to align with user goals, social responsibility, and widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”
However, under its previous AI Principles, Google explicitly said it would “not pursue” AI that could be used for applications such as “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people” and “technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.” The change was first spotted by The Washington Post.
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