Yelp Diversity Management Report 2020 PDF

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Diversity Management Report...

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Module Name: People, Management and Organisations Word Count: 1,821 words

Diversity Management Report for Yelp

Abstract This report will focus on the American online review company, Yelp, and their efforts to increase the presence of diversity management practices. It will also focus on the reliability and productivity of these practices, with a focus on data analysis and further recommendations for Yelp in the future.

Introduction Diversity management practices are the processes adopted by firms in which diversity is encouraged, implemented, and celebrated within companies. Diversity means understanding that each individual is unique and recognizing individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. There are two types of workplace diversity: surface-level diversity and deep-level diversity. Surface level is shown through the physical diversity data and the percentage of diversity within the firm. On the other hand, deep-level diversity is the recognition of the positive changes of deep-rooted attitudes and values of employees and employers. The latter level of diversity is more preferable because this will lead to better implementation of diversity management practices in Yelp. Therefore, Yelp can witness higher productivity, more output, better workplace relationships and feelings of happiness and achievement among employees.

Context

Yelp is a company in which people and businesses can discover company reviews from all over the world. It works by listing companies based on their physical features and offers reviews of these businesses so that consumers can see the quality of services provided. Yelp encourages its users to provide reviews on the businesses that they visit in the format of photos, written reviews or star ratings. Yelp was founded in 2004 by a HBS MBA student, Jeremy Stoppleman, and grew to what is now one of the leading internet review companies in the world. Currently, Yelp employs approximately 5,950 employees according to data collated in December 2019. It operates branches in eight different locations across the world, five of which are based in the United States; New York, San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago, Washington and Hamburg, Dublin and London.

In the past decade, major tech companies have been scrutinised for their lack of transparency about diversity data. It had been discovered within major tech companies such as Google, LinkedIn and Facebook that 80% of senior positions had been filled by men. Yelp was among these huge companies to have significant lack of diversity. Literature Review and Research Methodology Diversity management has been studied for several years now, particularly for the advantages it can bring. Y. B. Kim (2006) found 4 main advantages of diversity; it brings new and fresh ideas, improves firm growth, enhances firm image, and gains a pool of valuable human resources. Consistently, diversity management literature has focused on the amelioration of human capital as a result of increasing diversity management practices. Most of the work done on the subject focuses on the ethnic diversity of the team or on gender diversity; this is particularly the case for earlier literature on Yelp. Less widely read literature on diversity management have also addressed diversity in terms of sexuality, LGBTQ, religion and disability. This is as a result of increasing diversity group recognition and an emphasis on ubiquitous representation. Many studies highlighted the fact that diversity management can bring a unique competitive advantage which is difficult to replicate, so, therefore mimic practices are

avoided. (Cox and Blake 1991; McKay, Avery, and Morris 2008, 2009; Richard 2000; Richard and Johnson 1999) In a recent study on understanding diversity management, firms mimicking each other has led to diversity practices being undermined because they seem ingenuine if replicated by other companies.

Many researchers have been thinking about the best technique to manage diversity and several approaches have emerged. Joseph J. Distefano and Martha L. Maznevski (2016), argue that to create value in a diverse team, you need to use the MBI approach which consist of mapping by describing differences between the members of the team. This method is called ‘bridging’ which takes into account those differences when communicating with each other. For example, recent discussions of language barriers have led to the recommendation of diversity management practices. Kossek and Pichler (2006) believe that the best way to manage diversity is to select diversity, reduce discrimination in the internal environment and produce financial efficiency. However, the literature on diversity management does not sufficiently consider practice and lacks concrete and specific advice (Juan M. Madera 2015). Some articles point out the paradox of diversity; for example, when diversity is not well managed, it can be counterproductive for the company, create tensions, increase absenteeism and a lack of competitiveness because it can damage cohesiveness. (N Bassett-Jones 1999). Data Analysis and Research Methodology

Diversification, inclusivity and creating a sense of belonging for their employees became one of Yelp’s business priorities. In the past, while Yelp occasionally hired senior engineers from other companies, but it had a strong culture of promoting from within. Many of the senior engineers in the company, including Jason Fennell (SVP of Engineering), Eric Singley (VP of Consumer and Mobile), Travis Brooks (Head of Data Science) were promoted from within the company. This means that active practices to recruit ethically and gender diverse employees from external companies were not adopted. Therefore, the status quo of lack of diverse employees was maintained.

Therefore, Yelp brought in a former employee, Rachel Williams, to take on the role as Head of Diversity and Inclusion, who left in 2012 due to disdain at the lack of diversity at Yelp. Rachel went on a ‘listening tour’ in which she learned that employees stopped embracing their true identities at work in fear that they would be judged by their colleagues or superiors; woman-only book clubs and LGBT only email threads discussing their working life had been created. However, the percentage of technical positions filled by women at Yelp in the U.S. has increased from 10% to 18% since 2014. Rachel recommended creating diversity targets and diversity quotas in the recruitment process. She also put forward a new service of blind resumes where names were blanked, and voices could be changed during Skype interviews so that recruiters could not identify the gender or ethnicity of the candidate based on these factors.

In 2014, it was discovered that only 7% percent of Yelp employees were Hispanic, and 4% were black. BlackBurst is one of their recent initiatives that they have introduced to the company which focuses on the black community within Yelp. BlackBurst supposedly allows their black employees more freedom for conversation and is also a forum for employee and community interests giving them an opportunity for shared learning and development. Yelp also introduced mandatory, company-wide training on systemic racism and institutional bias. According to Yelp, clients who slander their employees with racist remarks are immediately turned away. As a result of BlackBurst, the percentage of black and hispanic employees has risen to 6% and 10%, respectively.

Below are statistics from the 2014 recruitment process.

Source: Yelp Investor Source: Presentation February 2020 - https://www.yelpir.com/overview/default.aspx

Source: Yelp Investor Source: Presentation February 2020 - https://www.yelpir.com/overview/default.aspx

Source: Yelp Blogs - https://blog.yelp.com/2019/11/cultivating-engagementdiversity-belonging-at-yelp

Source: Yelp Blogs https://blog.yelp.com/2019/11/cultivating-engagementdiversity-belonging-at-yelp Recommendations and Discussions

Considering the data seen previously and the analysis surrounding it, it can be said that overall, Yelp has shown to have made notable efforts in attempting to improve their diversity; however, the actual reason for these intentions and implementing these changes is uncertain. In today’s day and age, inclusivity and equity in the workplace is no longer seen as an optional element - it has become crucial for every organisation to take this factor into account, or it will not be tolerated by the public.

The majority of the data used was published by the company itself; therefore, it is undeniable that the company attempted to make themselves look as good as they possibly could. Some Yelp employees have even come forward highlighting “extremely insensitive treatment from Yelp”. Seemingly, there is a discrepancy

between published diversity data and actual diversity management practices. This is very damaging as a façade of diversity could mean a total neglect of diversity groups within Yelp by external market regulators. The company therefore needs to shift their focus to one which is centred within the company. If workers feel that they are receiving insensitive or unfair treatment, efforts put into diversity management will be useless and the whole process will end up being counterproductive; lack of diversity management training will most definitely jeopardize productivity within the workforce at Yelp because diverse employees will feel neglected and unmotivated. Therefore, although it is important to focus and keep into account the actual numbers concerning the races and genders of employees hired, it is also important to follow through with that “diverse mindset”. Yelp could afford to look at methods of diversity management adopted by the top 14 exemplary companies for diversity management. Firstly, Sodexo takes a unique approach with their diversity council because the members of their Diversity and Inclusion Business Advisory Board are not employees of Sodexo, but are rather leaders from outside the company who advise the corporate leaders on diversity issues (Sodexo 2011). A common thread in all these diversity councils is that support from top management is an important aspect, reflecting the importance of top management in promoting diversity initiatives (Chrobot-Mason and Quiñones 2002; Hebl, Madera, and King 2007). Yelp must ensure that diversity training sessions are mandatory for at least one day per month. There should not be the option to opt-out of these sessions. These sessions also should be attended by employees and managers in senior positions. They should bring in external workshops so that there is no bias and no possibility that employees in managerial positions will miss out on these workshops.

Verizon also celebrates cultural holidays with events such as the Lunar New Year, Cinco de Mayo, Hispanic Heritage month, Black History month, Latin Grammys, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Awards, and the Hispanic and Asian film festivals. Health Care Service Corporation established a

“Diversity Day,” in which employees can take a paid floating holiday that can be used for any cultural holiday. Equitable treatment and motivation towards employees are just as crucial as the original hiring process in diversity management. The company can continue with the diversity management once the employees are hired in several different ways: providing diversity training to avoid discriminatory behaviour between colleagues themselves, encouraging collaboration between diverse groups of colleagues and enforcing policies which are inclusive to all.

Conclusion In conclusion, it is constructive to see that Yelp has made significant progress regarding the diversity management within their company throughout the last several years. However, as mentioned previously, diversity management is a long process which needs to be retained in the long-term in order to be effective and create the best working environment. Otherwise, the only benefits the company would gain would be a positive public image, without the actual true benefits of diversity management which improve the company’s performance in the long-term.

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Managing Diversity and Inclusion at Yelp ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT CASE STUDY Gauri Subramani, Joshua R. Schwartzstein and Michael Luca Understanding Diversity Management Practices: Implications of Institutional Theory and Resource-Based Theory Yang Yang1 and Alison M. Konrad https://duo.dur.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-6076529-dt-content-rid21506044_2/courses/BUSI1141_2020/Madera-2013-Best%20Practices%20in%20Di.pdf https://duo.dur.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-6076529-dt-content-rid21506044_2/courses/BUSI1141_2020/Madera-2013-Best%20Practices%20in%20Di.pdf https://duo.dur.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-6076529-dt-content-rid21506045_2/courses/BUSI1141_2020/MBI%20Model.pdf Lessons from Yelp’s Empirical Approach to Diversity by Rachel Williams, Gauri Subramani, Michael Luca, and Geoff Donake September 2017 Yelp Investor Source: Presentation February 2020 - https://www.yelpir.com/overview/default.aspx https://blog.yelp.com/2019/11/cultivating-engagement-diversity-belonging-at-yelp https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/another-open-letter-to-yelp-reveals-the-companys-biggestproblem.html

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Best Practices in Diversity Management in Customer Service Organizations: An Investigation of Top Companies Cited by Diversity Inc. Juan M. Madera...