The company recently released stats on the race and gender of their 48,000 employees in the U.S. The results showed they had work to do in diversification, so they decided to take the problem one step further by announcing that they would give big bonuses for referrals of women and people of color that resulted in hires. Although the size of the bonuses are still being worked out, they will be big enough to encourage more referrals of African Americans, Hispanics, women and veterans.
Upping the game
Julie Sweet, Accenture's Chief Executive in North America, said "we're asking people to up their game on this." It's a fact that the best employees generally come from referrals, so it makes sense that more referrals could be the secret to hiring more women and other minorities. But Accenture is not the only company that knows the secret. Technology companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook have also examined their diversity stats and found that there is work to be done.
More work to be done
The work can be demonstrated in the fact that at companies like Intel and Microsoft, more than 80 percent of executive positions are held by men. Although Accenture's numbers are better -- 63 percent of executives are men -- their goal is to have women represent 40 percent of all newly hired employees by the year 2017.
Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/accenture-diversity-referral-bonus_us_56ba334ee4b08ffac122d474?utm_hp_ref=career--money
