Social Tables rolled out its third annual diversity report Tuesday, and, while the company has shown improvements, they’re still lacking in key areas.
In 2017, the event and hospitality management tech company reports its workforce is exactly 50 percent women, up from 49 percent last year. The same sort of improvements can be seen in both their management and engineering teams. In 2017, the engineering and product teams are now 35 percent female, compared to just 23 percent in the 2016 report.
On the management level, the Social Tables executive leadership team remained at the same quota: 33 percent of them are women.
Social Tables Challenges DC Tech To Release Diversity Reports
In terms of racial demographics, most Tablers still identify as white. But Social Tables has been hiring and bringing on more people of color in the past year. In 2017, the company reports that its workforce is 30 percent people of color, compared to just 26 percent last year.
White people make up 70 percent of the total workforce, and 64 percent of the new hires in the past year. The next largest ethnicity was Asian employees who now make up 20 percent of the workforce, up from 14 percent in 2016. Black people make up six percent of the total workforce in 2017.
In the past year, Social Tables set out three goals for themselves to improve their numbers: “Diversify our engineering team by hiring more women and minorities; Promote the presence of women in leadership positions; Increase representation of minorities in our workforce.”
In short, they did that. Social Tables has implemented a blind hiring process for engineering apprenticeships and internships. They’re focused on making their presence known at Howard University, a D.C.-based Historically Black College and University, or HBCU. And Social Tables started listing positions on sites like “InHerSight Careers,” which focuses on women talent. Social Tables also hosted 12 community events geared towards women in tech.
Internally, each department created custom action plans. The product and engineering teams, for example, now host a monthly lunch just for women on the team to chat about the culture and whatever else is on their mind.
But the team still recognizes that they have some work to do. Social Tables Chief Marketing Officer Trevor Lynn told DC Inno that while the District receives a lot of recognition for having an inclusive tech hub, it’s never clear what that exactly means.
That’s a big reason why Social Tables continues to release their diversity report when other D.C. tech companies keep them tucked away.
“We think it’s important. D.C. gets a lot of accolades for being one of the most inclusive cities for tech,” Lynn said. “That’s great from a macro-level, but you need to get into the actual companies and be held accountable.”
For Social Tables, they want to be held accountable, Lynn said. While they’re still solidifying their goals for 2018, it’s clear Social Tables won’t stop releasing their diversity reports.
“You can’t skip a year when you don’t have good numbers,” Lynn said. “People (on their team) are proud to say that ‘It’s not perfect, but we’re working towards it and we acknowledge it.'”
