Company bias education and testing application

[josiemundi]

Theme:
Black employees do not advance at the rate and to the levels of influence in the workplace they should due to a lack of transparency around opportunities and implicit biases in recruiting, evaluation, mentorship and promotion processes.

Brief description of your idea:

A platform/application that educates and tests bias in people who are involved in hiring within a company. The platform has a number of learning pathways for employees to learn about racial bias. This should focus on recommending educational material and promoting a learning pathway for people so that they can understand their bias and educate themselves.

The company can track racial bias (of the whole company) using inbuilt tests. These tests could be based on an existing framework (e.g https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/user/agg/blindspot/indexrk.htm). They should be carried out in conjunction with a learning pathway for reducing racial bias within the hiring process and focus on the overall company performance rather than specific individuals.

Further, as much bias is subconscious, it could highlight issues where intervention methods might be needed (e.g more data-driven hiring, masking racial information, etc).

What makes your idea unique?:
I am aware of racial bias tests existing, but perhaps not as part of a company education pathway. Further, companies may not be aware of how much subconscious bias is present in their hiring process.

Understanding how much of an issue this might be could help companies plan to mitigate issues that may arise and ensure that their employees are continuing to educate themselves in this area.

What would be the impact of your idea if implemented?:

• More structured education for those responsible for hiring
• Performance analysis for the company to understand how they can support and educate employees who are involved in hiring decisions.
• Data that can drive change and methods to improve the recruitment process to eliminate the potential for subconscious bias.