Facebook, like most of its Silicon Valley peers, is working to diversify its overwhelmingly white and male workforce. To do that, the company developed an internal training program to help hiring managers combat unconscious bias -- and on Tuesday, Facebook published the training course publicly.
Facebook "worked with leading researchers to develop a training course," which is now available at managingbias.fb.com, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a press release. She said that "many people" had asked Facebook to publish the course, which includes case studies, workshops and other presentations.
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Sandberg cited studies that show people with "black-sounding names" are less likely to get an interview for a job versus those with "white sounding names," saying that kind of unconscious bias hampers companies' efforts to hire more diverse applicants.
"Diversity is central to Facebook’s mission of creating a more open and connected world," Sandberg wrote.
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Though Facebook is sharing the course as a "best practices" resource for other companies, critics noted that Facebook is still far from de-homogenizing its own workforce.
Just last month, Facebook released the race breakdown for its workforce in 2013. About 91 percent of Facebook's U.S. employees were white or Asian; only seven of the 1,231 new employees hired during that year were black.