Microsoft tops Fortune 500 for diversity and inclusion

Microsoft is top of the leaderboard in this year's Fortune 500 diversity and inclusion list.

The 2021 list includes data from Measure Up, which ranks progressive companies.

Microsoft has regularly discussed the importance of diversity and inclusion, on demographics ranging from:

• Race
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• People with disabilities. 

The company appears to be backing its words up with action, because it is the top-ranked company on this year's Fortune 500 list in terms of diversity and inclusion.

Minorities, women and employees with disabilities - everyone’s on board

Fortune and Refinitiv have partnered together in order to collect data and rank organisations based on metrics such as, the percentage of minorities on a company's board, the percentage of employees that are women, and the percentage of employees with disabilities. 

Fortune highlights that Microsoft provides day-care services and has an employee resource group voluntarily formed by workers. 

Working at Microsoft, diversity rules

“The phrase, ‘I go where I’m invited, but I stay where I’m welcomed’, is a reminder that we must work on both diversity and inclusion”, said Utaukwa Allen, Workforce Development Director at Microsoft. 

According to Fortune:

• 39.7% of Microsoft's board is made up of racial and ethnic minorities. 
• Microsoft's workforce is 49.8% racial or ethnic majorities. 
• 41.3% of managers at Microsoft are racial or ethnic minorities.
• Almost 40% of Microsoft's board and 50% of its staff are racial and ethnic minorities

While Microsoft has positive figures regarding racial and ethnic diversity, it falls behind in gender diversity. 

According to 2020 data reported by Microsoft:

• 28.6% of its employees were women. 
• 26.3% of managers at Microsoft were women in the same timeframe.

The data for Fortune's list is from 2020 when available and 2019 at the earliest. In the case of Microsoft, all data highlighted in this article is from 2020.