Racial Equity Initiative

Culture of inclusion

Strengthening a culture of inclusion is about a company-wide, sustained focus on understanding and practicing the behaviors that can improve the lived experience for all employees at Microsoft. Shared language and shared understanding go a long way in building the foundation for those culture shifts.

This year, the average Microsoft employee completion rate was 99% overall for required D&I learning courses on allyship, covering, privilege, and unconscious bias in the workplace. And while required learning consumption remained high, there was more than a 270% increase in employees taking optional courses that allow them to explore topics such as interrupting microaggressions and breaking down barriers to create more inclusive workplaces.

The Race and Ethnicity Learning Path was introduced as a personalized, voluntary learning experience enabling employees to take ownership of their D&I learning journey. We also launched specific content on being an Informed Ally via an experience that provokes moments of reflection, activation of basic inclusive behaviors, and drives commitment to action. Most recently, we added new interactive D&I Simulations where learners can practice skills acquired through other D&I learning solutions.

The people manager community is making progress for required learning and discussions on D&I. As we strive to increase manager capability on inclusion, we are curating learning & enablement content to allow them to be successful in a hybrid environment.

Microsoft’s Inclusion is Innovation site conveys our unwavering commitment to directly address the systemic and cultural complexity of diversity and inclusion by showcasing the impact employees have when they can thrive.

Additionally, Microsoft’s Inclusion Journey site features thought leadership videos from external experts who speak to how we can leverage our resources. This is to help accelerate diversity & inclusion across our ecosystem and create a culture of inclusion for our employees.

Career planning and talent development

Microsoft supports legal practices throughout our talent motions that help build workforces with a range of backgrounds, skills, and experiences, foster innovation, and serve business and customer needs.

We are unwavering in our efforts toward advancing representation at all levels where we see a talent gap to market, and it is even more critical now that we prioritize internal development and growth. Growing global networks, enhancing business acumen, building skills, and leadership development have never been more important. With that in mind, we continue to invest in leadership development programming internally and partnerships externally that give employees a variety of options throughout their careers to learn and explore across professional opportunities.

Aligned to our commitment to ensure equitable access to opportunity, part of our work is to provide robust and holistic leadership development options available to Microsoft employees. These opportunities help deepen understanding of career options and pathways, supported by managers who are invested in the success of all employees thriving at Microsoft.

Broadening our work with suppliers

We have achieved our goal of increasing spend with Black and African American-owned suppliers by $500 million with double the number of suppliers. We recognize our work here is not done, and we remain focused on growing our utilization of diverse-owned suppliers to sustain our progress and strengthen the relationships we’ve forged.​

We’re continuing to encourage diverse representation progress in our top 100 suppliers, which account for a significant portion of our indirect spend. We now have 90 percent of these top 100 suppliers participating in a voluntary D&I self-assessment program. We have also launched an online community to encourage best practice sharing and will continue to work closely with our top strategic suppliers to create opportunities in support of diverse-owned suppliers.

To ensure new suppliers are ready for business and receive adequate resources and support to be successful at Microsoft, we have implemented a program called AMP’D (Advocates, Mentors, Peers for Diverse Suppliers) that focuses on supplier mentorship, advocacy, development, and access to capital programs through our banking relationships. AMP’D pairs Black and African American-owned suppliers with an advocate in the business, a mentor and/or supplier peers to help suppliers easily connect and address the topics most important to their businesses.

We have launched a Microsoft-wide training program to drive awareness of inclusive buying decisions with specific actions employees can take to create a more equitable supplier ecosystem and drive our collective success.

Investment in financial institutions

We are using our own banking needs to grow our portfolio investment activity with Black and African American-owned financial institutions. In June of 2020, we committed to double the percentage of our transaction volumes through these institutions by 2023, and we have exceeded our goal by more than double prior levels from 2020. In addition, we are increasing investment activity with Black and African American-owned asset managers.

We have also met our goal of creating a $100 million program focused on mission-driven banks. Since then, we have made investments focused on strengthening these institutions­–directly enabling them to deploy increased capital in local communities. For example, we have committed to the Mission-Driven Bank Fund as an anchor investor in collaboration with the FDIC to target Minority Owned Depository Institutions (MDIs), which directly enables an increase of funds into local community businesses, restaurants, housing, etc. We invested in the Southern Opportunity and Resilience Fund aimed at helping small businesses and nonprofits in southern and southeastern states with less than 50 employees navigate and rebuild from the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. We also invested in the Entrepreneur Backed Asset Fund investment to increase capital to MDIs and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)​.

Additionally, we have accomplished our $50 million commitment to create an investment fund focused on supporting Black and African American-owned small businesses. The fund focuses on investing to improve access to capital, increasing skill development, and reducing the technology gaps that exist today. Some of these investments include:

• Clear Vision Impact Fund investment with Siebert Williams Shank, created to mitigate deficits in capital access that minority-owned businesses often encounter and to enhance the positive impact that these companies have on the communities in which they operate.
• Investment in the Morgan Stanley Next Level Fund, which primarily focuses on early-stage technology and technology-enabled companies with diverse or women members as part of the founding team.
• Investment in BlackRock Liquid Federal Trust Fund (BLFT) created in partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which uses a portion of its revenue to fund scholarships at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).