Pinterest reveals 2016 diversity goals and announces a new project called Inclusion Labs

Pinterest is the latest company dedicating itself to bringing a more diverse workforce to the tech industry.

Today Pinterest announced its annual workforce diversity stats, revealing an overwhelmingly White and Asian male staff, though with a growing number of female engineers. It also outlined goals for 2016:

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• Increase hiring rates for full-time engineering roles to 30 percent female.
• Increase hiring rates for full-time engineers to 8 percent underrepresented ethnic backgrounds.
• Increase hiring rates for non-engineering roles to 12 percent underrepresented ethnic backgrounds.
• Implement a Rooney Rule-type requirement where at least one person from an underrepresented background and one female candidate is interviewed for every open leadership position.

In addition, Pinterest says it’s launching a new initiative this fall called Inclusion Labs in partnership with a strategy firm called Paradigm. The project is focused on developing key strategies around diversity and finding ways to share those findings with the tech community at large.

Paradigm believes there are four key areas where companies can improve in order to attract more diverse employees. Founders and executives should collect more precise data about their staff and the roles they occupy in the organization; expand their network through hosting events that draw a diverse crowd; rethink the hiring process so that people have a multitude of ways to demonstrate their skill set; and create an inclusive company culture.

Pinterest and Paradigm have already been working together for seven months. In that time Pinterest has slightly upped the number of women in its ranks. In a blog post, cofounder Evan Sharp noted:

We’ve made some modest progress over the past year, with our number of female employees growing from 40% to 42%, engineering interns increasing from 32% to 36% female, and women engineers hired out of school increasing from 28% to 33%. But we have more work to do to increase the number of employees from all underrepresented backgrounds, which is why we’re setting goals and taking the steps below.

Here’s a complete look at Pinterest’s workforce: