These tech platforms are helping employers tackle inequality

The #MeToo movement sparked a global call to end sexual harassment, assault, and gender discrimination in the workplace. As part of our investigation into sexual violence in global development, where 86 percent of employees know a colleague who has experienced work-related sexual harassment or assault, Devex launched #AidToo, a digital conversation about the breadth of — and solutions to — sexual harassment and assault in our sector. Organizations across industries are taking this moment to re-examine their processes, platforms, and methods for preventing and reporting discrimination of all kinds, opening up new opportunities for entrepreneurs eager to help companies tackle these challenges. As well as the clear social and legal implications of inequality, harassment, and discrimination, there are significant advantages to be had from a more diverse workforce. Research has found that more diverse companies bring in greater financial returns and build a better reputation with a broader customer clientele, too. For the aid sector, a champion of gender equality, ensuring that what an organization practices inside their own walls lives up to the values and work they promote around the world is perhaps even more pressing. In the past year, a crop of new tech startups has launched to help organizations tackle a wide range of bias and inequality at work. From “blind hiring” to anonymous feedback platforms, and on-demand legal advice, the following is a roundup of various tech startups — many founded by women — that are using innovative ways to diversify the employment landscape and make workplaces safe for all. Reporting abuse or harassment anonymously AllVoices and tEQuitable are two tech startups founded over the past year that provide anonymous platforms for employees to report incidents of discrimination or harassment within their company. tEQuitable, which is due to launch its pilot program next month, is “a confidential, independent platform for both employees and companies to address issues of bias, discrimination, and harassment in the workplace,” founder Lisa Gelobter explains. It’s not a new concept but instead, “what we are trying to do is take the proven model of ombudsman and modernize it and kind of bring it into the digital era.” They partner with their client companies very closely, and employees can visit or call to discuss an issue. tEQuitable then provides anonymized qualitative and quantitative feedback to the company with actionable advice to address any issues. “At the end of the day, what we want to do is help the company make a more inclusive workplace,” says Gelobter. STOP!T Solutions provides the same service through a mobile app which was initially created as a tool to report cyberbullying for school students. It has since expanded and is a used by thousands of schools as well as workplaces to report all means of inappropriate conduct. The app has even assisted with the arrest of two fugitives from anonymous tips. Tackling bias in recruitment Unconscious bias is an issue that companies have previously attempted to address with workshops and diversity training but without much success. The understanding is that everyone has deep, subconscious preferences for people with similar characteristics to themselves. This will therefore unfortunately and undoubtedly influence recruitment. The day Google revealed its poor employee diversity statistics back in 2014, Entelo founder, Jon Bischke, was pitching the newest arm of Entelo Diversity in New York City. Entelo Diversity is a software platform that uses algorithms and search filters to identify candidates from under-represented groups — in gender, ethnicity and veteran status — and lets recruiters know which candidates are most likely to be receptive to new job opportunities at a given time. It also tracks the progress of a company’s diversity recruitment efforts and provides feedback reports. Other tech companies are attempting to provide solutions to unconscious bias by anonymizing candidate profiles. Canadian startup HRx Technology eliminates unconscious bias during the application process by removing the details of applicants which could lead to bias in the screening process — such as names, age, gender — a practice that is known as “blind hiring” and which is currently being piloted with leading organizations in Canada. Blendoor does the same but also works with companies’ HR teams by tracking the candidate’s application process to understand where and when unconscious bias happens so it can be addressed. This could be a problem with the culture of a whole organization or just an individual hiring manager. Appealing to a broader audience of applicants Sometimes, biases unintentionally start with the job description. Textio grades and identifies biased language used in documents and job descriptions, such as “ninja” or “guru” which have been shown to deter female applicants from applying. By altering these words, job postings should appeal to a broader and more diverse audience who may have been put off by the initial language used. You can upload your job description, and the platform will highlight words that appeal to one gender more-so than another and words that may deter people. They claim that with a high Textio Score, recruiters hire 23 percent more women on average. Advice and legal help Last month, Botler AI announced they were releasing a sexual harassment bot for the United States and Canada. They help victims understand whether an incident can be classified as a crime for legal action or not. An automated messaging system is used between the inquiring victim and the bot. Using natural language processing, the bots analyze conversations to compare with documents from 300,000 court cases that violated the criminal code in the U.S. and Canada. Based on those previous cases, they can then determine whether the incident being communicated can also be classified as a legal violation. The bot is also able to generate an incident report if the victim wants to report it to HR or the police. Similarly, Bravely provides a way for employees to seek external advice anonymously from HR professionals, called “Pros,” about approaching a situation making them uncomfortable at work. The Pros are qualified, real people with direct HR, people operations, and coaching experience. Employees register with the site and are matched to a Pro with the experience best suited to help them. Users can then schedule a phone call with their Pro which will remain completely confidential and anonymous. Managers can also use Bravely for advice on how to give difficult feedback or create better relationships with employees. They also provide reports on themes and trends to companies. Talent Sonar attempts to combine many of these tools into one tech product. It has five steps to aid the recruitment process: Prioritizing skills required; creating inclusive job descriptions — similar to Textio, though, not as advanced; blind resume review — much like HRx Technology and Blendoor; structured interview assistance; and a data collection roundup of the applicants’ entire application process to help you make a final decision. They also have a free iOS interviewing app which records interviews and integrates with the rest of the Talent Sonar program to assist with the hiring process. Questions raised about technology But while many people share the view that computer systems and artificial intelligence remove human biases of gender, race, and disability because of their lack of real-life awareness, a study published by Science last year contradictorily found that computer systems can actually adopt and reinforce human biases from users. The researchers developed a word association test for computer systems using billions of words from the internet. It found that computers gave negative words such as “failure” a similar coding to a set of common African-American names such as “Alonzo,” and conversely gave a similar coding for positive words like “laughter” to a set of European-American names like “Brett” and “Alison.” This means that it understood those words and names to have similar definitions because of how they are used by people on the internet. Additionally, it associated the words of professions like “hygienist” and “librarian” with words describing gender like “female” and “women”. Technology solutions can therefore reinforce the biases of those who created them, a fact not lost on the many female startup founders, and a reason many are ensuring their teams are inclusive and diverse. These findings make startups described above evermore important. Creating equality in the workplace and recruitment processes is a priority in today’s world, and technology is providing a promising tool in achieving it. Gelobter notes how it is interesting “the different approaches that we’re [tech companies] all taking, and my hope is that in combination, we’ll all be able tackle it.”