Drafted, the Boston startup focused on hiring and referrals, is revamping its platform DiversityReports.org amid a renewed focus on diversity in the tech industry.
Originally launched in 2018, DiversityReports.org in its current form collects diversity reports from top tech companies—think Etsy, Yelp and 23andMe, for example—and aggregates them into a single place. The effort started by cataloguing the gender divide as well as ethnicity demographics from companies, which submit data themselves via Typeform.
"In the beginning, I would say, it kind of lasted for a little while when [diversity] was top of mind in the social consciousness," said Drafted CEO Vinayak Ranade. "We saw that over time, companies stopped reporting updates to us."
Ranade said that very few companies have submitted new information to DiversityReports.org over the last six months. Additionally, because the platform is not a core part of the 14-person startup's day-to-day operations and until recently did not have a staff member dedicated to staying on top of the project, the data shown on the site now is somewhat outdated.
Now, that's changing. Drafted recently hired MBA summer intern Danielle Dawkins, who will be in charge of an overhaul of DiversityReports.org. (Proof that the tech world is small: Dawkins was laid off from The Predictive Index earlier this year and found the new position through Layoffs by Drafted, another timely tool the startup debuted this spring.)
Dawkins is beginning by researching ways to incentivize companies to not only report their diversity data to Drafted, but continue to come back to DiversityReports.org so it serves as a relevant, continuously updated resource for the tech industry. She will also update the questionnaire that companies fill out to submit their data. Ranade said it will likely include a question about ethnicity in leadership, as well as questions about the percentage of immigrants at each company.
If all goes well, Drafted will have early results to share within a few weeks. By the end of August, DiversityReports.org should be completely revamped, with more functionality and more data than it has in its current form.
"First, we want to go in and understand: What are the gaps in terms of diversity data, who are the people who need to understand the data really well, and when do they do it?" Ranade said. "One of the things we found from initial surveys was that a lot of people don't necessarily have diversity data as a top-of-mind thing."
An analysis from WIRED in October found that over the last five years, there has been little progress, even at major companies, when it comes to diversity in tech. At Google and Microsoft, the share of Black and Latinx technical employees in the U.S. rose by less than one percentage point between 2014 and 2019.
And that's just for companies that conduct diversity reports—and reveal those numbers publicly. Other tech companies have been less inclined to do so. Earlier this month, Snap CEO Evan Spiegal reportedly told employees the company would keep its diversity report private because releasing it would reinforce the idea that minority groups are underrepresented in the tech industry.
For Ranade, it's important that DiversityReports.org, beyond aggregating reports, can be a helpful, actionable resource for companies, and that companies are productively engaged with Drafted over time. The platform can certainly be used to hold the tech industry's feet to the fire, he said, but it also needs to generate positive momentum.
"You can't beat companies down into caring about diversity," Ranade said. "We have an opportunity to help reset the conversation with some data and frame it in a way that’s positive both for the companies and for the people that are demanding change."
