Pandora commits to increasing U.S. employees of color to 45% by 2020

Publicly traded digital radio company Pandora today announced new commitments for diversity.

Most significantly, the company intends to raise the percentage of U.S. employees of color — that is, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaska natives, blacks and African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, and native Hawaiians — from 35 percent to 45 percent by 2020.

The idea is to “reflect the evolving makeup of our local workforce,” Kristen Robinson, Pandora’s chief human resources officer, wrote in a blog post. The effort will initially focus on Pandora’s “main hubs” of Oakland (the location of its headquarters), Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. “The breakdown for representation within each race and ethnic group will be informed by each local community of which Pandora is a part,” Robinson wrote.

Pandora also intends to reach parity for promotions across genders, races, and ethnic backgrounds by 2020. Additionally, the company will “aim to look at our business practices and activities through a diversity lens,” which will involve making sure the company “reflects diversity” in its brand, partnerships, and events, among other things, Robinson wrote.

The company last updated its diversity statistics in August. At that time, 65 percent of employees were white, and 52 percent were men. In leadership roles 80 percent of employees were white and 63 percent were men.

Like a few other technology companies, Pandora released its first diversity report in 2014. In August 2014, about 71 percent of employees were white and almost 51 percent were men, while its leaders were nearly 84.6 percent white and 61 percent male.

For the sake of comparison, Facebook’s U.S. employees were 52 percent white, and globally 67 percent of its employees were men as of June 30. At Google, 59 percent of U.S. employees were white and 69 percent of all employees were male as of January.

Intel has also made diversity commitments.