Diversity Data And The Special-Sauce Defense

Tech companies say detailing how many women and minorities they employ will expose them to harm from competitors.

- Jordyn Holman

Diversity and inclusion—the two words are repeated so often they’ve become a mantra in Silicon Valley. Hardly a day goes by without some tech industry leader extolling the virtues of having more women and minorities in their employee ranks.

Yet when asked to demonstrate the progress they’re making toward that ideal, many companies argue that publicizing workforce data is tantamount to giving away trade secrets.

Granted, more employers in the industry are voluntarily releasing information on their diversity strategies. Yet some of those same companies say government-mandated disclosures of how many women and people of color they employ must remain private. Making them public, they maintain, would invite competitors to poach their talent.

At issue is the EEO-1 employment data report that all companies with at least 100 workers must submit to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission annually. Over the years, several news outlets have filed Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests in an attempt to force the agency to release company filings—mostly without success. After one such attempt, Palantir Technologies, the data mining company co-founded by Peter Thiel, addressed a letter to the U.S. Department of Labor in 2017 in which it warned that disclosure of the data would encourage rivals to “raid” its growing ranks of women and minorities, jeopardizing the company’s investments in recruiting and training.