Microsoft’s chief diversity officer studies smaller companies

That’s according to Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft’s chief diversity officer and corporate vice president of talent and learning. At Fortune‘s Impact Initiative in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, McIntyre explained that she and other senior leaders at Microsoft are eager to learn from younger companies that can be more nimble in their inclusivity and accessibility efforts. These learnings, she said, help the company build and retain a competitive workforce.

“I often look to smaller organizations to see how they’re innovating with sort of less of a legacy or less history, because they can do innovative, creative things that big companies can’t,” said McIntyre. “It really is that sharing of information and sort of wisdom and creativity that I think keeps the conversation fresh.”

McIntyre was in conversation with Charlotte Burrows, chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and Beck Bailey, Accenture’s global chief diversity officer. Bailey added that Accenture makes efforts to collaborate with other companies and organizations on topics like diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

“It’s a space where the natural competition of companies can be suppressed a little bit, because we are invested in what is societally good as well as good for our businesses,” said Bailey.

The trio noted that despite gains in diversity and inclusion in the tech space, women and minorities remain disproportionately underrepresented in the workforce. To wit: A recent report from the EEOC found that as of 2022, women make up just 22.6% of high-tech roles—meaning those closely related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—barely budging from the 22% they comprised in 2005. That is despite women making up close half of the total U.S. workforce.

All three of the speakers are working to bring opportunities to those under-represented groups. McIntyre noted that women comprise 27% of tech roles at Microsoft and 31% of the company total, higher than industry averages. She says reaching those percentages has required consistent efforts the company plans to continue, despite broader political backlash against DEIA initiatives.

She also emphasized the importance of nurturing employees once they start working at your company. Inclusivity efforts are moot if employees don’t feel respected and valued and continue to do good work in the sector. Accenture’s Bailey added that it’s important to listen to the needs of employees to keep them in the workforce, which could include instituting policies like better parental leave and flexible work, and “whatever’s going to actually help them thrive.”

“Everybody does better if they feel respected and valued in the workplace and they’re given
those tools to really contribute,” the EEOC’s Burrows said. “We have seen that over and over, our mission makes it easy to bring people in…but to keep them there, and keep them feeling like they are valued in contributing, that takes more.”