Leading social media company Twitter has faced trouble convincing people that the company is diverse and inclusive.
Facing criticism that most of its employees were white men, Twitter has hired a new diversity officer who is also a white male.
Apple’s diversity chief Jeffrey Siminoff will replace Janet Van Huysse as Twitter’s vice president of diversity and inclusion, the San Francisco company said on Twitter.
According to Twitter’s second annual diversity report released in August 2015, only 34 percent of the companies staff were women and a grand total of 59 percent of Twitter employees were white.
The company states it is committed to creating a more ‘diverse Twitter’ and aims to increase the amount of women in its offices to 35 percent and increase underrepresented minorities overall to 11 percent, minor increases from last years statistics.
These events occur after former Twitter employee and engineer Leslie Miley slammed Twitter in November 2015 for not committing to a diverse workplace. The post went viral and elicited an apology from Twitter.
Rebecca joined the HRreview editorial team in January 2016. After graduating from the University of Sheffield Hallam in 2013 with a BA in English Literature, Rebecca has spent five years working in print and online journalism in Manchester and London. In the past she has been part of the editorial teams at Sleeper and Dezeen and has founded her own arts collective.
