Intel is the only tech company willing to disclose internal data on how much it pays its employees – broken down by gender and race. While the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires the information from companies with over 100 employees, it will not release it publicly. But in a bid to be more transparent and usher in change, Intel is releasing the pay information publicly, an unprecedented move among its peers.
Intel has long been a staunch advocate of progressive change in the tech industry, and it’s hoped that its open pay disclosure will push other companies, specifically but not limited to those in the tech industry, to do the same. While many companies offer diversity reports, Intel remains the only major silicon valley company to offer actual pay data publicly.
“The risk of releasing this information is backlash over the data not being where you want it to be,” Julie Ann Overcash, Intel’s vice president of human resources and director of compensation and benefits, says to Bloomberg. “You must be willing to put yourself out there as a company that can withstand criticism to achieve real progress.”
Intel is a company of over 100,000 employees in over 50 locations, which it now reports is fully-representative of today’s skilled labour market. Overcash announced at the beginning of the year that Intel has reached a major milestone in achieving gender pay equity across its worldwide workforce.
In its 2018 diversity report, Intel reports female representation is up 8.5% since 2015, URM (underrepresented minority) representation was up 17.7%, Hispanic representative up 10.8%, African American representation up 31.4%, and Native American representation up 40%.
Bloomberg reports that many major US banks have said they currently will not be releasing the data, while Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb wouldn’t comment. Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon have so far not responded to its requests, either.
This may be the only year this data is collected in this way, meaning there may be little pressure on these companies to release this data following this disclosure period. The EEOC cites employer costs as the reason for the change in data collection. The Trump administration had also attempted to freeze the program, first introduced under the previous administration, although this has since been overturned by a federal judge following a lawsuit from the National Women’s Law Center.