Our 2022 Workforce Diversity Report

 

Introducing our report 

When we introduced an enhanced set of company values in our 2022 fiscal year, one of the values that remained consistent was “Embody Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.” Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIBs) isn’t an initiative or project that begins and ends within a single year, but rather a value at the core of our company that guides our everyday decision making. Nevertheless, the beginning of a new fiscal year affords us the opportunity to reflect on how we’re doing and take stock of the pace of progress. Two years ago, like many companies, we took a look at our organization and determined that our reality did not match our aspirations. While we had conviction that diversifying LinkedIn was critical, we also knew that we had to do more and move faster, and that we needed to take a systemic approach in order to make sustainable progress.

As we exit our 2022 fiscal year, we are on a different trajectory. This year brought the most rapid increase in diversity that our workforce has ever experienced – especially at senior and leadership levels. Our focus on building an environment of belonging across employee communities is evolving and maturing. And we’re seeing results not just through hiring, but also in retention and sentiment within underrepresented communities. We’re energized by our momentum, but we are far from satisfied. Our aspirations are to build a world-class inclusive and equitable organization that represents our communities and sets an example across the professional landscape. While our journey continues, we enter our 2023 fiscal year with a sense of optimism for the powerful future we unlock as we move towards a more diverse and inclusive organization.

Beginning with an environment of belonging

Our commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging at LinkedIn is first and foremost a commitment to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, regardless of their social identity. The foundation of this work is our Environment of Belonging strategy, which is built intentionally to operate across a wide range of communities. In its second full year, our Inclusive Leadership for Managers initiative reached over three quarters of our manager population, and grew through additional learning paths to support managers’ leadership journeys, from hiring practices to team culture. Programs like Allyship Academy, Inclusive Practices for Individual Contributors, and team Conversation Guides equip employees to build trust across dimensions of difference including sexual orientation, ability, gender identity, and religion. We also partner with organizations like OutLeadership, GiftAbled,  Coqual and Tanenbaum to inform our strategy and support our workforce.

Further, our ten Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) play a vital role in creating community and belonging for employees with shared identities and their allies. We support ERG leaders developmentally through programs like the Collaborate, Empower, Own (C.E.O.) leadership program and executive coaching, and we reward them financially through our industry-leading Distinguish program.

Diversifying the company and our leadership

Building and nurturing diverse teams is one of our top priorities, with an emphasis on employee groups that are underrepresented in our workforce. We’ve been especially focused on diversifying our leadership in order to strengthen our organizational decision-making and to instill employee confidence that paths to advancement are available to all. Two years ago, we pledged to double the population of senior U.S. Black and Latino employees (leaders, managers, and senior individual contributors) by fiscal year 2025. We’re thrilled to share that we’ve already hit this milestone for Black employees, growing the Black senior population by 127%, and we’re well on our way for senior Latino employees, growing that population by 74%. During the same period, our total U.S. population at those senior levels grew by 34%. From a gender perspective, women now represent over 45% of our global leadership population (Director+), up 8% from last year.

This progress is also reflected in our employee representation trends at all levels. Black employee representation is up over 50% in a single year, to 7.2%, while Latino representation is up 17% to 7.4%. Representation of women in technical roles is up 11% to 27.8%, and our global employee base is now 47% women.

Prioritizing growth and development

Employee retention is critical to a sustainable diversity, inclusion and belonging strategy, and for many, retention is closely linked to career development. We’ve placed deliberate focus here for years, and for the first time, we see no gaps in attrition rates for US Black and Latino employees or global women in leadership and technical roles relative to our overall averages. Through a focus on leadership support via initiatives like our global ImpactIn Mentorship Program, DIBs Mentor Circles, and spectrum of sponsorship leadership learning initiatives, employees from under-represented groups now report higher rates of mentorship and sponsorship than our overall employee averages. Programs like the Asian American and Pacific Islander Invest program bring a tailored approach to community building and development investments. We also focus on equity within our talent systems and processes, by providing comprehensive compensation education to managers and actively managing pay equity, as well as putting measures in place to promote equitable visibility of talent in promotion and succession processes. As our leadership team has become more diverse, we’re noticing improvements in employee confidence in their ability to grow their careers at LinkedIn via our Employee Voice Survey.

Our work in growth and development has been strengthened by partnerships with organizations with a shared vision for inclusion in corporate spaces. We’ve partnered with organizations like Lesbians who Tech in the U.S., The Diversity Practice in Europe, and Shenomics in Asia Pacific to create development opportunities for employee communities around the globe.

Diversifying through hiring

Inclusive recruiting practices play an essential role in advancing our DIBs strategy and achieving measurable results in hiring and representation. LinkedIn takes a holistic view of diversity that includes a deep understanding of the unique nuance of regions across the globe.  This view may include race, ethnicity, gender identity, age, diverse abilities, and veteran status amongst the many dimensions of diversity on which we focus. We’ve built and continue to anchor on a strategy that emphasizes embedding an inclusive lens at every stage of the process, including systems, programs, and behaviors that, when taken together, lead to better hires that strengthen our organization. This work begins with an intentional approach to build communities of talent that will diversify LinkedIn through diverse pipelines, networks, and relationships with candidates from backgrounds underrepresented in our offices around the globe. 

Partnerships play a critical role in helping us build & nurture these networks of talent. We work with over 50 strategic partners, who share our focus on creating diverse and inclusive workplaces around the globe. Organizations like Blavity, Anita B.Org, Management Leadership for Tomorrow, Disability In, Black Tech Fest, The Future Skills Programme, CareerTrackers, and others have helped us reach and nurture a diverse pool of candidates. 

Beyond connecting to communities outside of LinkedIn, we’ve worked to create systematic approaches to our candidate funnel and hiring processes to ensure greater consistency in progressing a diverse set of candidates to on-site interviews and to mitigate bias within the decision-making process. By fostering the equitable conditions and inclusive behaviors that allow qualified candidates from a diverse set of backgrounds to enter, advance, and succeed in our hiring processes, we’re able to move the needle on diversity steadily over time.

Looking ahead

Much of the energy behind our enduring commitment to Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at LinkedIn stems from our conviction that LinkedIn’s platform plays a critical role in creating equitable opportunities for our hundreds of millions of members – and the billions of potential members. We’ve ramped up our investments in equity across our platform with key initiatives like the launch of Top Voices in Racial Equity to Follow, the release of the our B2B Institute’s Equity Everyday Research, Diversity Nudges in LinkedIn Recruiter, and more than 10 million members joining us on our Equity journey by completing Self-ID. Creating equitable impact at scale is an imperative embedded within our company vision–to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. 

While we are pleased with the direction of our progress over the past two years in particular, we recognize that this journey is incredibly nuanced and progress can be uneven. We enter our 2023 fiscal year during a period of geopolitical tension and macroeconomic uncertainty. But our commitment to DIBs and Equity is a constant force within our company, embedded explicitly within our company values, and regarded as a priority requiring relentless, continuous improvement. We move forward with humility in that knowledge, but also excitement at the ways in which a more diverse and inclusive workforce will bolster the next phase of our company’s growth in pursuit of our vision.

 

 

In accordance with UK Government requirements, LinkedIn publishes a Gender Pay Gap Report for our UK business. Please find here our reports for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

In accordance with French Government requirements, LinkedIn publishes a Gender Equality Index Score for our French business. Please find the score included in our Gender Equality Pay report for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

In accordance with Irish Government requirements, LinkedIn publishes a Gender Pay Gap Report for our Ireland business. Please find here our 2022 report. 

In accordance with Brazilian Government requirements, LinkedIn publishes a Gender Pay Gap Report for our Brazil business. Please find here our report: 1 semester 2024.

Click here for more information about our 2021 Diversity Report.