PayPal CEO Touts Diversity In Blog Post

PayPal chief executive Dan Schulman underscored the company’s commitment to diversity in a blog post published Wednesday (Oct. 11), saying the company is focused on making a positive difference in the world.

“Our ability to deliver on our mission of democratizing financial services and capabilities starts from the inside, by building a global team of employees that reflects the communities where we work and live, and the diversity of the customers we serve,” Schulman wrote. “That’s why ‘inclusion’ is a core value and defines who we are and everything we do.”

According to the executive, the digital payment company boasts a blended community of more than 18,000 employees located around the world. Schulman said the company has made “encouraging progress”  in some very important areas of inclusion and diversity, such as pay equity. Still, he noted, there is more work to do in that area.

Take gender equality, for example. Schulman said PayPal has continued to work toward reaching gender equality, with 43 percent of its workers female and a 20 percent year-over-year increase in the number of women who are vice presidents or higher. It also had a 13 percent increase in promotions of females this year compared to last and, at the same time, a “significant” decline in voluntary attrition.

“And, while we increased our external hiring of women at the vice president and above level by 150 percent over last year, we promoted twice as many women at this level than we’ve hired externally,” Schulman wrote.

The company has also delivered on its plans to create a more diverse board, adding two female directors and announcing a new director who is African American. As a result, 45 percent of the board is now comprised of women and underrepresented ethnic groups.

In terms of pay equality, Schulman said the company is continually focused on ensuring similar roles are paid equally. He noted the company has a diverse global workforce with employees representing 122 nationalities in 55 offices across 31 countries. In the United States, the number of underrepresented ethnic groups in technical roles increased by 3 percent to 9 percent, while 17 percent of the overall U.S. workforce is made up of underrepresented ethnic groups.

“The thriving diversity and inclusion community groups within PayPal play an important role in actively supporting and advocating for employees who are women, veterans, LGBTQ, specially-abled or disadvantaged,” Schulman wrote in the blog post, “and we’ve recently launched Amplify, our new community to help advance the experience of black employees of PayPal around the world.”