Intel offers twice the current referral fees for women and minority hires

With more and more technology companies making the push for diversity in their workforce, Intel Corporation too announced a notable change to its employee referral bonus policy. The company is now offering double referral fees to employees who can successfully suggest women, minorities and veterans to its workforce. The move is aimed at improving their commitment to hiring a diverse workforce as well as impacting the tech sector in general, according to reports. The tech giant is offering incentives of up to $4,000 to employees who refer a job candidate who helps the multinational corporation to achieve its diversity goals. The referral fee represents twice the current $2,000 bonus introduced with a view to alter the job applicant pool as 45% of Intel’s employee demographic is dominated by white males. Intel said in a statement that the company is committed to increase the diversity of their workforce. The company said that they were offering staff an additional incentive to help Intel attract diverse qualified candidates in a competitive environment for talent. In early 2015, Intel pledged to allocate $300 million over the next five years to address Silicon Valley’s dismaying diversity figures. The Santa Clara-based company has been vocal about its aim to have a complete representation of women and under-represented minorities in its US workforce by 2020. At the end of 2014, Intel had 54,000 employees. 75% of which were male and 56% of employees were white. The statistics also showed just 8% of the company’s employees were Latino and 3.5% were African American. The company did not share data on veterans. Intel is not the only company trying to fix diversity issues across their offices. Some of the largest tech companies in the world, including Facebook, Twitter and Google are facing significant challenges in workplace diversity and have instituted measures aimed at addressing those problems. Just last week, Pinterest announced plans to introduce various programming to hire and train more minorities for the coming year. Facebook started a new program in June, where applicants for certain division are required to have at least one reservation to include at least one minority. Search giant Google also contributed to diversity efforts with a $150 million fund to focus on diversity initiatives. The two companies are committed to address the talent problem at the high school and university level. Christine Dotts, a spokesperson for Intel, said that they have offered higher recruitment bonuses in the last ten or so years, but she declined to comment on what those bonuses were for.