At OCLC, technology with a purpose drives workplace diversity

OCLC may be a midsize software provider catering to a niche industry, but it’s beating a lot of industry giants when it comes to workforce diversity.

The nonprofit company, which delivers technology and services to the global library community, has shown regular year-over-year increases in both BIPOC and female representation, landing it the No. 1 spot among midsize companies for DEI in Computerworld’s “Best Places to Work in IT 2025” survey. As of this year, the makeup of OCLC’s overall workforce is 25.5% BIPOC and 45.5% female, with its IT group comprising 29.5% women. The industry average for women in STEM roles is under 28%.

Because it views DEI as a foundational plank for a positive and innovative workplace, OCLC gets creative with its offerings. At the local and national level, OCLC is actively collaborating on policy and outreach programs. It sponsors an array of conferences and meetups, including Stir Trek, Code Mash, and the Society for Women Engineers, to help recruit, promote, and develop female and BIPOC leaders in the technology space.

Partnerships with tech boot camps representing underserved communities, historically black college and university (HBCU) alumni networks, diversity internships, and diversity referral bonuses are also part of its strategy to attract and build a more diverse workforce. Management is held accountable, via metrics and compensation, for moving the needle on the company’s overall progress.

OCLC also takes a view of diversity beyond gender and ethnicity. It has created new job classes to cast a wider net for talent, including an associate developer role established with a local outreach coding program. “This helps create a diverse pipeline of folks who didn’t go to college for a degree,” says Bart Murphy, OCLC’s chief technology and information officer. “We have folks who’ve spent 15 years as a teacher and then wanted to get into software development.”

Purpose-driven work drives retention

While actively recruiting for diverse points of view, OCLC is equally committed to retaining existing IT talent. The average tenure of the IT staff is nine years, and 17% have been on board for two decades. Murphy credits OCLC’s long-term strategic approach to hiring and investing in its people as a key retention asset. Employees are encouraged to create development plans and are supported with resources that help them achieve their goals. Recognition, rewards, and bonus programs are designed to call out superior performance. Flexible work schedules have long been the norm, but since the pandemic, a hybrid model enables IT teams to work three days in office and two at home, with some exceptions, depending on the role.

At OCLC, headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, the average tenure of the IT staff is nine years, and 17% have been on board for two decades.

OCLC

OCLC is leveraging its technology orientation to increase its appeal to a younger workforce. As a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, it empowers its developers to work with the latest cloud technologies, including service-based architectures; large-scale data sets; artificial intelligence (AI); and AWS services for immutable infrastructure, microservices, container orchestrators, auto-scaling, and graph technology. OCLC works to keep younger generations in the fold, through extensive career planning, training, and pathways designed to visualize future and specific career goals.

“You won’t have people here for 20 years if you’re still offering them mainframe development work,” Murphy says. “We mature them, giving them the space and tools to learn new skills.”

Perhaps the biggest reason tech professionals stick around at OCLC is the desire to work for a company that is purpose-driven. Says Murphy: “People still want to work for a company that has a mission and does good work in the world, and that’s what we do.”