On Tuesday, DoorDash released its first ESG report since going public in 2020. The report spans everything from insights about merchants and Dashers to community impact and sustainability at the delivery service company. The report outlines diversity and representation at DoorDash and shows the demographics of both its contract workers and corporate employees.
The report shows that 58% of Dashers in the U.S. are women, and 38% are people of color.
“I would be very, very happy seeing that metric continue to grow,” Katy Shields, the head of People at DoorDash, told Protocol. “I think flexible work really matters, particularly for women, and for people of color. And I think part of the differentiation I've seen us make an investment in is the safety and the ways that people can highlight their safety, [or] flag if they're not feeling safe.”
When it comes to global corporate employees, women are just shy of making up half of the workforce. Currently, 46% of total DoorDash employees are women and non-binary people, up from 44% the year prior. Representation of women in leadership is lower. In 2021, women accounted for 40% of leadership at the director level and above, up from 35% the year prior.
In terms of racial diversity, in the U.S., 16% of corporate employees identify as Black and 13% identify as Hispanic or Latino. And the percentage of underrepresented employees in technical roles remains low at 7% of DoorDash’s U.S. employee base. The company reported that it's aiming to increase the number of underrepresented workers in technical roles to 10% by 2025.
DoorDash also hopes to increase the percentage of underrepresented employees in leadership from 12% to 20% by 2025.
DoorDash trends slightly ahead of other tech companies when it comes to racial diversity. By comparison, Uber reported about 10% of its staff identified as Black and 8% identified as Latinx in 2021. The numbers were even lower at Meta, where Black and Hispanic employees account for about 4% and 7% of its U.S. workforce respectively. Protocol continues to track publicly released diversity data for some of the largest U.S. tech companies.
Shields points to DoorDash’s leadership accelerator program as one of the ways it promotes diversity higher in the ranks at the company. Its Elevate program focuses on getting more women of color around the leadership table. It has also been a major retention play for the company. Shields shared that the retention rate of participants after a year of completing the program is 91%. “We drive these more curated, highly personal, niche and very hands-on programs to increase representation,” she said.
In fall 2020, DoorDash leaders also began to make it an imperative that employees be able to demonstrate a “DEI track record” in order to be eligible for promotions at the senior level, said Shields.
“And what we mean by that is you're actively diversifying your team, [and] you are actively driving the type of culture where women and people of color will want to work for you,” she said.
Her team has also built similar guidance in their employee performance ratings model. In order to be eligible for strong performance ratings at the leadership level, employees must also demonstrate that they have a strong DEI track record in recruiting and hiring.
“I'm a firm believer that DEI should not be done off the side of your desk. It should be driven in everything we do as a leadership team, and that's what we're aiming to do here at DoorDash,” said Shields.
DoorDash plans to launch its full DEI report in the coming weeks.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE