Silicon Valley has gotten a lot of attention for its lack of workforce diversity, but many of those problems of underrepresentation of minorities in the technology industry can be found in the greater business world in the U.S.

For example, the Washington-based Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) found a dearth of Latinos and Latinas in positions of power in its 2015 Corporate Inclusion Report, released by the organization on Monday.

HACR, an organization that advocates for more inclusion of Hispanics in the corporate world and has been tracking Latino trends in corporate America since 2009, found that just over 7 percent of board seats in the companies it surveyed were occupied by Hispanics this year.

While that's a higher rate than the average in the Fortune 500, according to HACR's release, it's still low -- especially considering that Latinos make up over 17 percent of the U.S. population, are the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S., and now account for nearly half of all consumer spending growth.

Even lower still is the rate of executive positions held by Latinos, which HACR found to be about four percent. At the bottom of the corporate power ladder was Latinas, as they comprised just one percent of all executive positions in the 128 companies HACR surveyed. Included in the survey were big companies like AT&T, Disney, GM, Bank of America, Ford, McDonalds, Target, UPS, Intel, and Verizon.

Having tracked corporate inclusion of Latinos for over five years, HACR found that the rate of Hispanics holding executive positions in the corporate world has remained "relatively flat" since 2012, a lack of movement that HACR described as "worrisome."

"No gain in momentum at the executive ranks means that leadership is not changing," noted the report. "One area where we would like to see companies making a change is in Hispanic representation in the C-suite."

"Forward thinking companies such as these recognize that diversity and inclusion is not only the right thing to do, it's also the smart thing to do," asserted Dr. Lisette M. García, who leads the HACR Research Institute. "More companies should follow this lead in using data and analytics to identify gaps to help impact change and keep up with the demands of the ever changing diverse marketplace." 

There were some positive trends in HACR's report, including the overall distribution of Latinos in board positions. Fewer than a quarter of the companies surveyed reported having no Hispanic board members in 2015, which was down from about one-third the previous year.

HACR, however, noted that participants in its survey tended to have higher Hispanic representation rates than the companies outside its annual review.

The overall average employment of Latinos at these companies generally tended to be better than in Silicon Valley, taken by itself, with representation at more 15 percent of the total employee base. Many technology companies, by contrast, have not managed to raise their Latino workforce proportions above the single digits.

However, the majority of positions held by Latinos in the corporate world continue to be non-exempt positions, meaning lower-status jobs with hourly wages instead of salaried work.

In its annual assessment, HACR measures more than overall workforce statistics, board members and executive positions. The survey also takes into account procurement and philanthropy practices at the companies that benefit Latinos.

In 2015, HACR found that average charitable donations were up over the previous year from $81.6 million to more than $85 million, with an increase in donations to Latino-led organizations from about $5.2 million to over $6 million.

But when it came to procurement -- working with Latino small businesses and suppliers -- HACR found the share of total spend for Hispanic businesses to be "lagging."

As Latin Post previously reported, the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative found that while Latino-owned businesses were being founded at an historically rapid pace, more than half of Latino entrepreneurs were unable to grow their businesses, or were otherwise facing problems of stagnation or diminishing returns.

HACR's latest report adds to that picture, finding that only two percent of total corporate procurement spending went to Latino-owned companies.

"As the strength of the Hispanic consumer continues to grow, corporate America will soon learn that the Hispanic population is the key to maintaining a competitive advantage and essential for preserving market position," remarked García.

Part of that change requires assessing inclusion of Hispanics within corporate America -- and next year, HACR plans to increase its annual report's benchmarking value by refreshing and expanding to a new format with new criteria.