Over the last few years, more and more big companies are finding investment in workplace diversity more important than ever before. Along those lines, Intel (News - Alert) has taken a big step in that direction by establishing a $300 million fund to be used in the next three years to improve the company’s diversity. If the plan ends up being successful, it would improve the diversity of the company’s workforce by improving the number of women and minorities in the technology field.
Intel is just the latest firm that has put new attention to this issue. Over the last year, Apple (News - Alert), Google and other big time tech companies have been facing more and more criticism for the lack of diversity in their staffs. These rather large tech companies tend to have employees that are predominantly Asian and predominantly male.
Intel’s plan would attempt to increase the minority and woman workforce at the firm by as much as 14 percent. This kind of investment is something that isn’t done all the time and it’s a safe bet that some of the other large companies will be paying special attention to see if this fund works. Intel might be one of the leading tech companies in the world, but it also has a specialization in the gaming world. The firm announced in a recent release that it is going to put special attention towards getting more women into the gaming world.
This particular move seems especially to be a way to fix a problem that was created with its role in GamerGate. The company removed an advertisement from a site that had run an essay by a female games critic under pressure. Intel later said it regretted buckling under the pressure of the people who ended up harassing the critic for weeks. Intel has said it has learned from its mistakes and this kind of workplace diversity investment is supposed to back up those claims.