Microsoft Failing in Employee Diversity? Company Rewards Executives Hiring More Women and Ethnic Minorities

By JC Santos

Nov 21, 2016 09:04 AM EST

Tech-giant Microsoft will tie executive bonuses of senior employees who would continue to hire qualified female and ethnic-minority employees indicating the giant's commitment to diversifying its workforce. According to analysts, its efforts may also be due to the falling percentage of female employees and the lay-off of thousands after it dissolved Nokia's handset division.

Bloomberg reports that the company's lay-off of employees after dilemma with Nokia showed ratings drop to 25.8% from 26.8 percent the previous year. Engadget's research into Microsoft's efforts revealed that the tech-giant's diversity programs still fell "year over year".

Another study by InformationWeek in 2015 revealed that earlier figures in 2014 showed that about 29% of he company's employees were female. The reason was still massive corporate lay-offs that led to the drop to 26.9 in 2015.

However, the earlier source also noted that in the same year, the percentage of female senior leadership had increased to 27%. Also, during the time, five of the eleven Microsoft Board of Directors were female or are part of an ethnic minority.

Microsoft had once been notorious for indirectly playing-down women employees. The copany's CEO Satya Nadella had once answered a question regarding how women should go about closing the pay gap by stating that women employees "should have faith and hope for adequate rewards than to be paid fairly" — a statement he later said he answered wrong.

After answering the question by stating "if you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask," he made it the company's goal to boost funding programs for women and minorities working for it.

Microsoft's efforts is part of the slow-but-steady growing diversity of genders and minorities in the workplace. The Harvard Business Review's March study showed that those in power — executives in position — often penalize women and minorities who try to recruit individuals who think and who are similar to them directly or indirectly.