Netflix highlights room for improvement in first-ever inclusion report

Netflix has released its first-ever inclusion report, including figures on the racial and gender representation amongst its employees and where the company says it needs to improve.

The streaming giant says that women make up almost half of its workforce at 47.1%, including at the leadership level, with directors and above at 47.8%, vice-presidents at 43.7% and senior leadership at 47.6%.

Meanwhile, nearly half of Netflix’s US workforce (46.4%) and leadership, meaning director level and above (42%) is made up of people from underrepresented racial and/or ethnic backgrounds, including Black, Latinx or Hispanic, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Pacific Islander backgrounds.

The streamer adds that the number of its Black employees in the US has doubled in the last three years to eight per cent of its total workforce and nine per cent of its leadership (director level and above).

Going forward

Vernā Myers, the company’s vice president of inclusion strategy, writes that Netflix has “made good progress over the last three years, though adds: “But let’s be clear, we’re not where we want to be and we need to do better. We have a lot of work to do to attract more underrepresented folks to our company.”

Accordingly, the streamer has set out an ongoing plan to improve representation at the company. It has expanded its recruitment programme to hire more inclusively and is looking for ways to create more access for emerging talent from underrepresented backgrounds, including its first technical bootcamp in partnership with HBCU Norfolk University.

Netflix says that it is also striving to be more equitable with pay and benefit practices, including annual compensation reviews to rectify pay disparity, a gender-blind parental leave policy, family forming benefits and looking at ways to expand transgender and non-binary healthcare coverage.

Myers adds that Netflix recognises it “could do a much better job at recruiting Hispanic or Latinx and other underrepresented folks into all areas of our company, particularly our leadership.”

It also has “a lot more to learn about topics of inclusion and representation outside of the US” and has begun to address this through an expansion of its inclusion teams across Europe, Middle East and Africa, with more to follow this year in the Asia Pacific and Latin America regions.

“All this work is necessary if we want to inspire cultural change in our industries, in the perspectives being heard. The neutral period is over, we need the courageous period,” said Myers.