New York Times executives said they would make "fundamental changes" to the work culture after conducting an investigation into diversity and inclusion at the company.

The survey was conducted after a number of high-profile scandals involving racism at the company in the past year.

James Bennet, the editorial page editor, resigned in June following an article in which Republican Senator Tom Cotton advocated "sending in the troops" to protests against police brutality during demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd.

Reporter Donald McNeil Jr. also left the paper in February after the Daily Beast reported that he had used the "n" word and made negatively stereotyped comments about black teenagers on a field trip.

The survey results have shown that the paper is a "difficult place to work" for people of color, especially black and Latino workers, executive editor Dean Baquet, managing editor Meredith Kopit Levien and president Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. said in a statement.

"While noting some progress in recent years, the report was often highly critical. After several months of interviews and analysis, we have come to a stark conclusion: The Times is a difficult environment for many of our colleagues, from a wide range of backgrounds,'" wrote in-house media reporter Katie Robertson.

On diversity and representation in the newsroom, the survey revealed that Black employees represent just 9% of the paper's workforce and that people of color hold only 5% of leadership positions. It also showed that Native American employees represent less than 1% of the entire workforce, Latinos 7%, and Asians 14%.

The survey was conducted by editors Amber Guild, Carolyn Ryan, and Anand Venkatesan, who highlight that black women rated the company lowest in nearly every category of the newspaper's 2020 employee survey.

They point out that black employees who are not part of management leave the company at a higher rate than their white colleagues. And finally, it shows that Asian-American women said they felt "invisible and unseen", even confessed that they are regularly called by the name of different colleagues of the same race.

The New York Times plans to increase the percentage of black and Latino leaders by 50% by 2025. To achieve this goal, Baquet, Levien and Sulzberger announced a plan to improve the company's diversity and culture, which includes creating a new diversity office in Human Resources and reviewing the company's diversity progress twice a year.

"For more than a century and a half, The New York Times has succeeded in part by recognizing when it needed to change, this is such a moment," newspaper executives said in the statement.