Intel Exec Says Companies Need to Better Retain Diverse Talent

(Bloomberg) --Intel Corp.’s Barbara Whye, the chipmaker’s head of diversity and inclusion, said that creating a diverse workforce is about more than just the new employees a company is hiring.

“What we learned early on is that if we are going to really achieve these diversity and inclusion goals, it can’t depend solely on hiring,” Whye said Tuesday, speaking at the Bloomberg Business of Equality Summit in New York. “At Intel, we’ve learned that it’s hiring, it’s progression but it’s also retention.”

Roughly two years ago, the chipmaker started a program meant to help employees voice concerns or issues they were having at work. Known internally as WarmLine, workers can access the online hotline and talk with a representative to help address what’s troubling them.

"We’ve had 10,000 employees that have utilized the WarmLine,” Whye said. The firm also looks for trends in the calls in an effort to detect problems and prevent issues from arising in the future. “It’s giving us a source of predictive analytics that can help us drive proactive solutions,” she said.