Why Intel is doubling down on diversity
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Why Intel is doubling down on diversity

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Megan Stowe writes how Intel plans on tackling the lack of diversity in the sector, starting in the supply chain.

The current pandemic has completely disrupted the entire business landscape and forced us to think in different ways.

Organisations with a more diverse range of voices may well prove to be more agile, not only for ensuring a well-informed response to the current situation but also to boost business operations in future.

Diversity and inclusion are key focuses for us at Intel, and we're doing everything we can to ensure that we have diverse teams in place across the entire supply chain.

Growing up in a country where the diverse population was not always embraced, I've seen the effects that this can have first-hand. At Intel, our end customers, through the OEMs, are diverse so we need to include all voices into our supply chain to ensure that we are addressing all needs. Often, niche suppliers can move a lot quicker than some of the bigger players and bring lots of business innovation.

I'm very excited to say that we have already achieved our goal to increase annual spending with diverse-owned suppliers to $1 billion.

Along with that, we have also exceeded our $200 million Global Citizen commitment for spending with women-owned businesses.

We hit $100 million within the first year, rather than the planned three-year timescale, so we upped the target to $200 million. We reached $279 million by 2020.

These are among the many company milestones detailed in our latest Corporate Responsibility Report, which also sets out our 2030 goals, which will see us doubling down on spending with diverse-owned suppliers and aiming for a $2 billion spend by 2030.

We have already begun to expand our supplier diversity program to markets where it's a relatively new concept, such as Japan.

We have Supplier Diversity requirements written into our contracts with our top tier suppliers that they must spend at least 10% of what we pay them with diverse suppliers.

In the UK, we are already working with two NGOs - WEConnect International and Minority Supplier Development UK (MSDUK) and will work with more in future, including those in the LGBT+ space.

We already work with NGOs in this area within the US, and we are also now starting to partner with newer startup organisations in Europe. What's more, during the current pandemic, we are bringing down our usual payment terms from 30-60 days to 14 days for diverse businesses to help them with cash flow.

As part of our 2030 goals, we are also aiming to double the number of women and underrepresented minorities in senior leadership roles, as well as hoping to exceed 40% representation of females in technical roles.

To do this, we will be focusing on improving the talent pipeline along with retention rates, taking a global approach, rather than concentrating solely on the US In the UK. We are currently at 19.5% for females in senior roles, which is about 1% higher than the global rate. While for females in tech roles, we are at 23.4% in the UK so there is clearly still lots of work to be done to hit our new 2030 goals of 40%.

As part of our journey towards this goal, we will work with other companies to create and implement a Global Inclusion Index. This will use common metrics to enable the industry to track progress in achieving greater levels of women and monitories in senior and technical positions, along with technology accessibility and equal pay.

As part of our 2030 goals, we will work with other companies to create and implement a Global Inclusion Index. This will use common metrics to track the progress in achieving greater levels of women and minorities in senior and technical positions, along with technology accessibility and equal pay.

We're also aiming to advance accessibility by increasing the percentage of employees who self-identify as having a disability to 10% of our workforce.

Additionally, we are working to ensure that our supply chains are diverse and are responsible. For 2030, we are scaling our supplier responsibility programs to ensure respect for human rights across 100% of our top tier companies as well as our higher risk second tier suppliers.

Accountability and transparency are more important than ever, with customers and investors looking to see how brands treat employees and supply chains during these challenging times.

We will continue to focus on responsibility, inclusively and sustainability as we work towards our 2030 goals, which are highly aspirational but also very achievable.

Doubling down on diversity will be a key focus across the business, while the move towards more collaboration reflects the need for us to work together to address the challenges that no one organisation can tackle alone.

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