Target holds nearly steady on workforce diversity but saw few gains

The percentage of Black workers at Target fell slightly during a tumultuous 2020 in which the retail made several high-profile commitments to diversity.

The representation of Black employees declined around 0.7% over 2019 to about 14.95%, according to workforce diversity data released this week by Target. The Minneapolis-based retailer wants the percentage of Black workers to increase 20% by 2023, which would mean 18% of its workers identify as Black.

"It is a long road in front of us," said Kiera Fernandez, Target's chief diversity and inclusion officer and senior vice president of talent and change, in a phone call with reporters this week. "That is why we built (a) three-year time frame."

The company set the workplace diversity targets last year in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and subsequent calls of more equitable treatment of Black people.

She acknowledged that it takes time to change the infrastructure of an organization.

On Wednesday, Target hosted its first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Forum. It was a virtual event featuring CEO Brian Cornell and other Target executives, as well as some of its business partners including Black-owned vendors.

"For Target, we have a role to play to leverage our scale to impact communities and to get involved in sessions like today where we can not only share, but we can continue to learn," Cornell said.

"I want my technology team to look like America," he said. "The only way you are going to build great technology for Target's guests is to be building it by engineers who represent Target's guests."

Having measurable targets and data is important, he said.

One strategy that had a large impact, he said, was to change jobs prerequisites such as requiring a four-year computer science degree for somebody to qualify as a software engineer.

McNamara has fielded questions about if some of the efforts to diversify his team are discriminatory against white men.

"I'm not trying to create a bias. I'm just trying to correct one," he said.

To make the company more attractive for Black workers, the company has said it needs to work on advancement opportunities and reduce turnover, especially in positions with historically low levels of representation such as the tech jobs.

In the recent workforce report, the percentage of Black employees who work as company officers jumped to 9% from 5% the year before.

Overall, Target's employee diversity makeup was 49% white, 26% Latino, 5% Asian, 15% Black and 3% of workers identifying as mixed race. Fewer than 1% are American Indian and less than 1% are Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders.

The percentages in most of the categories are nearly identical to 2019.

Target's overall workforce increased about 12% in 2020 to a little more than 403,000, according to the report.