Back to All News
Inclusion Takes Root at Netflix: Our First Report Vern Myers
VP of Inclusion Strategy
Play Video
Play Video
Social Impact
13 January 2021
GlobalUnited States
Listen to the audio version here
The night before my eighth birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and I saw my father cry for the first time. My family and community were rocked, and I can trace back my calling to work on inclusion and equity to that night. I decided to live King's dream.
I eventually became a beneficiary of that dream, so I made sure it wasn't in vain. For decades, as a consultant, I helped companies remove barriers for people from underrepresented and excluded communities. That path finally led me here to Netflix in 2018, when I joined forces with a company that had so much influence on which stories get told and by who.
We started by listening to Netflix employees about how it was to work here. The company added inclusion as a cultural value in 2017, but here's what we found: we weren't as great as we thought we were, or aspired to be. And over these last two years, our inclusion team has been building a foundation, sowing the seeds for inclusion to take root within the company.
Today, we're sharing what we've been working on with Netflix's first inclusion report. Here, we'll provide a snapshot of representation within the company, how we plan to increase it, and how we cultivate a community of belonging and allyship.
What inclusion unlocks
Let's begin with why inclusion and diversity matter at Netflix. A lot has been written about our culture of freedom and responsibility. Yet the most important thing we've learned is that when you pair that culture with diversity and inclusion - it unlocks our ability to innovate, to be creative, to solve problems. It breaks up group think. It brings different lived experiences and perspectives to a problem, so that we're no longer solving them in old ways. And, we're able to better entertain our current and future members.
Our inclusion strategy team can't do this alone. We need everyone to contribute. Each employee needs to look at every issue, decision, and meeting, inside and outside the company with inclusion in mind. We call this an inclusion lens, where employees ask questions like, whose voice is missing? Who is being excluded? Are we portraying this authentically?
When we get that right (more on that later), magic is possible. We're uplifting stories about Black British lives. We're chronicling the life of a gay man with cerebral palsy on TV, a first. We're moving some of our cash into Black banks. Inclusion is at the heart of so many of these moments, and we've asked employees to tell you how they came together in this video. Please take a look:
Illustrations by Ndubisi Okoye. Featured in order of appearance: Vern Myers, vice president of inclusion strategy; Ted Sarandos, co-CEO and chief content officer; Bozoma Saint John, chief marketing officer; Kabi Gishuru, director of inclusion recruiting programs; Aaron Mitchell, HR director for Netflix Animation; Rochelle King, vice president of creative production; Aaron Lynch, creative marketing manager; Frances Abebreseh, communications manager; Haydn Palmer, creative assistant; Gena-mour Barrett, editorial and publishing manager; and Cole Galvin, director of content acquisition.
The examples in this video only scratch the surface. We'll create more of them if more of our employees come from different backgrounds. As our co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos explains: inclusion on-screen starts with inclusion in our internal community. This report will cover the work we do internally at Netflix, and it starts with being transparent about the numbers.
Representation by the Numbers
Since 2013, we've published diversity data quarterly on our jobs site. Here's the current snapshot:
Women make up half of our workforce (47.1%), including at the leadership level: directors and above (47.8%), vice presidents (43.7%) and senior leadership (47.6%).
Nearly half of our U.S. workforce (46.4%) and leadership (42.0%, director level and above) are made up of people from one or more underrepresented racial and/or ethnic backgrounds, including Black, Latinx or Hispanic, Indigenous, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Pacific Islander backgrounds.
The number of Black employees in the U.S. doubled in the last three years to 8% of our workforce and 9% of our leadership (director level and above).
Data as of October 2020, at approximately 8,000 full time streaming employees. Leadership is defined as employees in director, vice president, and executive officer roles. Illustration by Ndubisi Okoye.We've made good progress over the last three years. You can dig into the trends in the footnotes. But let's be clear, we're not where we want to be and we need to do better. We have a lot of work to do to attract more underrepresented folks to our company. So we've created a team and plan to do that.
Increasing Representation
We rely on every recruiter, every leader, and every employee to invite more voices into Netflix. But it takes coordinated effort to do this well. Kabi Gishuru heads the inclusion recruiting programs team at Netflix, which helps us look at gaps in representation and find ways to narrow them now and in the long term. Some of the highlights of this work:
Hiring more inclusively: Recruiters play a vital role in finding candidates, interacting with them, and advising hiring managers. The inclusion recruiting programs team built a training curriculum to do this more inclusively, with topics like: spotting bias in the interview process, sourcing candidates in non-traditional ways, and helping hiring managers identify the perspectives missing on their teams. More than 200 people o
Inclusion Takes Root at Netflix: Our First Report
13/01/2021
| LINK: | https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-inclusion-report-2021... |
| See more stories from netflix |
Most recent headlines
27/01/2021
Genelec The Ones' power Morten Lindberg's stunning immersive studio
Genelec The Ones' power Morten Lindberg's stunning immersive studio posted: 27/01/2021 In the world of immersive music recording, no-one has done...
27/01/2021
One-of-a-Kind Dejero App Simplifies Broadcast Setup for Reporters and Anchors Working From Home
One-of-a-Kind Dejero App Simplifies Broadcast Setup for Reporters and Anchors Wo...
27/01/2021
Crew in a Box Uses Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and ATEM Mini Pro for MTV Movie & TV Awards: Greatest of All Time
Crew in a Box Uses Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and ATEM Mini Pro for MTV Movie & TV ...
27/01/2021
Jonathan Forsythe Named Managing Editor at Tegna
Tegna named Jonathan Forsythe managing editor, giving him responsibility for expanding its Verify brand of reporting aimed at stopping the spread of misinformat...
27/01/2021
Starz Promotes Karen Bailey to Executive VP, Original Programming
Karen Bailey was promoted to executive VP of original programming at Starz....
27/01/2021
Jon Marks Named Research Head for Scripps' National Nets
The E.W. Scripps Co. named Jon Marks chief research officer for its new national television network business, effective immediately....
27/01/2021
American Spirit Adds Nielsen Services in Some Markets
Nielsen and station owner American Spirit Media said they reached an agreement to provide certain services in some of the markets where American Spirit operates...
27/01/2021
Time Spent Streaming Grew 44% in 4th Quarter: Conviva
Time spent streaming in the fourth quarter jumped 44% from a year ago, according to Conviva's State of Streaming report....
27/01/2021
AT&T Reports Loss in Fourth Quarter
AT&T reported a loss in the fourth quarter as the pandemic continues to impact the company's media operations....
27/01/2021
Subscription-Hopping' Noted by TiVo During COVID
A survey by TiVo found that some viewers were subscription hopping, adding and dropping the growing array of video streaming services as those viewers spend m...
27/01/2021
ViacomCBS Says Super Bowl Ads Are Virtually Sold Out'
Commercials in the upcoming Super Bowl are virtually sold out, according to spokesperson for ViacomCBS....
27/01/2021
Unruly Launches Self-Service Sales Tools for CTV, OTT
Video ad platform Unruly said it launched a suite of self-service tools that let publishers package, price and sell programmatic over-the-top and connected TV i...
27/01/2021
Monitoring creative production during lockdown
Computer monitors with professional level performance are now available for a small fraction of the traditional price. We asked four freelance content creator...
27/01/2021
BBC's Winterwatch is world's first large scale OB solely powered by green hydrogen
According to the BBC, using green hydrogen instead of diesel twinset generators ...
27/01/2021
Matchroom Sport launches media production arm
New production arm will be led by Katie Hearn and focus on outside production and live streams By Jenny Priestley Published: January 27, 2021 New productio...
27/01/2021
ColinaNet and SES Networks to Offer Enhanced Internet and Wi-Fi Services Via Satellite across Peru
Written on 27 Jan 2021 The collaboration will enable high-performance connecti...
27/01/2021
China Media Group Brings First Extended Reality New Year Gala to Life With Ross
Ottawa, Canada, January 27th 2021 - While Chinese communities traditionally look forward to their New Year festivities in February, Chinese broadcaster CCTV sti...
27/01/2021
Chilefilms Chooses Ross for New Regional Studio Hub
Ottawa, Canada, January 26th 2021 - The South American broadcast market has seen many changes over the last decade, with new channels and platforms springing up...
27/01/2021
Mo-Sys forges AR partnership with VividQ
Mo-Sys forges AR partnership with VividQ data-src=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c562aaf4-bpthumb.jpg data-srcset=https://cr...
27/01/2021
Archiware releases Version 6.0 of the P5 Software Suite with LTFS as Native Archive Format on LTO
Archiware releases Version 6.0 of the P5 Software Suite with LTFS as Native Arch...
27/01/2021
Rohde & Schwarz Supports Egyptian National Media Authority in Major DVB-T2 Transmission Network Expansion
Rohde & Schwarz Supports Egyptian National Media Authority in Major DVB-T2 Trans...
27/01/2021
ATEME Makes Video-Compression History with Emmy Awards Triple Crown
ATEME Makes Video-Compression History with Emmy Awards Triple Crown data-src=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c562aaf4-bpthumb...
27/01/2021
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Cinematography (with Tobias Schliessler ASC) GCS256
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Cinematography (with Tobias Schliessler ASC) GCS256 data-src=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c56...
27/01/2021
Post Break's How To PNYA Highlights the Organization's Work in Helping NY Post Pros Thrive During Covid and Beyond
Post Break's How To PNYA Highlights the Organization's Work in Helping...
27/01/2021
Crew in a Box Uses Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and ATEM Mini Pro for MTV Movie & TV Awards: Greatest of All Time
Crew in a Box Uses Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and ATEM Mini Pro for MTV Movie & TV ...
27/01/2021
SMPTE Earns Two 2020 Emmy Awards for Technology and Engineering
SMPTE Earns Two 2020 Emmy Awards for Technology and Engineering data-src=https://creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/avatars/263018/5fa08c562aaf4-bpthumb.jpg...
27/01/2021
CBC Radio's Maloney Inducted Into Specs Howard Hall of Fame
CBC Radio Vice President Brian Maloney was inducted into the Specs Howard School of Media Arts Hall of Fame on November 14, 2020. CBC Radio Vice President Bria...
26/01/2021
IBC 2021 Opens Accelerator Innovation Program Submission Window
LONDON-IBC is now accepting submissions for the Accelerator Media Innovation Program 2021, which highlights R&D projects that attempt to solve business and tech...
26/01/2021
TiVo, Pindrop Partner on Voice Enabled Personalization Tech
ATLANTA-TiVo and Pindrop, a voice authentication and fraud detection company, have announced a partnership with the goal of providing streamlined content discov...
26/01/2021
LA Updates COVID-19 Protocols for Production
LOS ANGELES-The County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health has issued an updated guideline for TV production protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, as L...
26/01/2021
C-Band Auction Set to Move Into Assignment Phase
WASHINGTON-After raising more than $80.9 billion thus far, the FCC's C-band auction is set to continue with the assignment phase scheduled to begin on Feb. ...
26/01/2021
TV Academy Announces Reality TV Diversity Internship Program
LOS ANGELES-The Television Academy Foundation is launching a new internship program designed to promote diversity in the unscripted/reality TV sector of the ent...
26/01/2021
Panasonic Kairos Boosts LiveX 4K Broadcast Production
NEWARK, N.J.-Panasonic's Kairos next-generation IT/IP live production platform was recently installed at LiveX, a production and broadcast company, as an ef...
26/01/2021
Epistemix Software Modeling Offers Insights on Fan Attendance Variables on COVID-19 Infection Rate
Epistemix Software Modeling Offers Insights on Fan Attendance Variables on COVID...
26/01/2021
Flowics Powers Live Graphics, Content for Linear and Digital Broadcasters
Flowics Powers Live Graphics, Content for Linear and Digital Broadcasters By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - 10:45 am Prin...
26/01/2021
NESN Keeps Its Eye on the 4K HDR Ball With Launch of New Studio
NESN Keeps Its Eye on the 4K HDR Ball With Launch of New Studio The 4K HDR-ready studio launches ahead of 4K HDR Red Sox game productions in 2021 By Jason Dach...
26/01/2021
Latest Additions to Sundance Film Festival Talks & Events
Park City, UT - Sundance Institute today announced the latest additions to the programming slate of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday, J...
26/01/2021
STUDENT AND YOUTH COMPETITIONS 2021
SHORTLISTS ANNOUNCED Today the World Photography Organisation announces the shortlisted photographers in the Student and Youth competitions of the Sony World P...
26/01/2021
Groundbreaking Alpha 1 Camera Marks a New Era in Professional Imaging
New 50.1-megapixel (approx., effective) full-frame stacked Exmor RS CMOS image sensor in combination with an upgraded BIONZ XR imaging processing engine with ...
26/01/2021
Schneider Electric accelerates its sustainability strategy, comes top in Corporate Knights ranking of world's most sustainable corporations
Newsroom News & Press Releases Spokespeople Assets Blog Contact u...
26/01/2021
20/01/2021
SBS is expanding its Chinese-language offering with the launch of SBS (SBS Chinese), a new digital service for Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking Australians, goi...
26/01/2021
R&S SMM100A vector signal generator redefines midrange signal generation for 5G, Wi-Fi 6E and much more
R&S SMM100A vector signal generator redefines midrange signal generation for 5G,...
26/01/2021
Rohde & Schwarz supports Egyptian National Media Authority in major DVB-T2 transmission network expansion
Rohde & Schwarz supports Egyptian National Media Authority in major DVB-T2 trans...
26/01/2021
Certifiably Fast: Top OEMs Debut World's First NVIDIA-Certified Systems Built to Crush AI Workloads
AI, the most powerful technology of our time, demands a new generation of comput...
26/01/2021
Nokia's comprehensive C-Band portfolio ready for 5G build-out in U.S.
Nokia's comprehensive C-Band portfolio ready for 5G build-out in U.S. Press Release Nokia's comprehensive C-Band portfolio ready for 5G build-out i...
26/01/2021
News Corp to Report Fiscal 2021 Second Quarter Earnings
News Corp to Report Fiscal 2021 Second Quarter Earnings New York (January 26, 2021)-News Corp will release its second quarter Fiscal 2021 results on Thursday, ...
26/01/2021
'Vikings: Valhalla,' the All-New Exploration of the World-Renowned 'Vikings' Saga, Confirms Cast Members
Back to All News Vikings: Valhalla, the All-New Exploration of the World-Renown...
26/01/2021
itorium Launches Virtual Classrooms for Impactful Learning Journeys
itorium Launches Virtual Classrooms for Impactful Learning Journeys Netherlands | January 26, 2021...
26/01/2021
NELVANA WINS TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING EMMY AWARD FOR ITS WEB-BASED ANIMATION PRODUCTION AND ASSET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, NELNET
NELVANA WINS TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING EMMY AWARD FOR ITS WEB-BASED ANIMATION ...
