United States’ streaming company, Netflix has increased its workforce of blacks by 40%, including top executives.
The company, in its second annual inclusion report Thursday, noted that black employees now hold just over 13% of leadership positions in the U.S., while women make up more than half of Netflix’s full-time employees and leaders globally.
According to Netflix, there has been a prioritized inclusion in recent years, with the company hiring a head of diversity and inclusion in 2018 and boosting representation of different racial and ethnic minorities in Hollywood.
In 2021, the company said it was committing $100 million to programs that will give women and minorities a better shot at making it in Hollywood after a report it commissioned found that the gap still persists at the company, even though it’s ahead of peers in film and TV.
Management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co, in a report last year, noted that consumers might spend as much as $10 billion more, or an additional 7%, if film and TV projects were more racially diverse.
“Black-led projects have been underfunded and undervalued, despite often providing a better return on investment”, the consulting firm had said.
Investors King recalls that recently, Netflix revealed that it ended the fourth quarter of 2021 with 222m paid memberships (with 8.3m paid net adds in Q4).
“We achieved several milestones in 2021: we had the biggest TV show of the year (Squid Game), our two biggest film releases of all time (Red Notice and Don’t Look Up) and Netflix was the most Emmy-winning and most nominated TV network and the most Oscar-winning and nominated movie studio of 2021. Full year revenue of $30 billion grew 19% year over year while operating income of $6.2 billion rose 35% year over year”, Netflix said in a notice to its shareholders.
However, for Q1’22, the company forecasts paid net adds of 2.5m, as well as an operating margin of 19%-20% for the full year.
“Our guidance reflects a more back-end weighted content slate in Q1’22 (for example, Bridgerton S2 and our new original film, The Adam Project will both be launching in March). In addition, while retention and engagement remain healthy, acquisition growth has not yet re-accelerated to pre-Covid levels. We think this may be due to several factors including the ongoing Covid overhang and macro-economic hardship in several parts of the world like LATAM”, the company said in the report.
