Diversity in Tech: Intel Offers Up to $4,000 Referral Bonus For Minorities, Women, Veterans

21 Aug Diversity in Tech: Intel Offers Up to $4,000 Referral Bonus For Minorities, Women, Veterans

Intel is increasing their referral bonus to encourage minorities, women and veterans to work at the company. Qualified referrals of these groups will give current employees a bonus of up to $4,000.

Intel confirmed that they will be offering the $4,000 bonus in a statement to the Wall Street Journal Monday. The bonus is twice the amount of the company’s current referral amount. Intel sees this as a way to get more women and minorities into the company that has been dominated by white males.
“Intel is committed to increase the diversity of our workforce,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “We are currently offering our employees an additional incentive to help us attract diverse qualified candidates in a competitive environment for talent. This is not the first time we have offered employees referral incentives for diverse candidates, and it’s a commonly used recruitment tool for businesses. Today, it’s one of many programs we are deploying to attract talented women and underrepresented minorities to Intel.”
Intel is not the only technology company to struggle with diversity. Facebook, Twitter and Google have all struggled with workplace diversity and are trying to create programs to address the issue and encourage more minorities and women to apply for these positions.

By the end of 2014, Intel had almost 54,000 employees, of which more than three-quarters were male and 56 percent of them were white, the company’s own diversity report shows. Only 8 percent of the workforce was Latino and just 3.5 percent was African American.

Intel recognized the problem of the lack of diversity at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, according to CNET.com. CEO Brian Krzanich said Intel would invest $300 million to support diversity in the workplace. Krzanich said the task of increasing diversity will be difficult and is not quite sure how it will be done.

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