The concept of fairness underlies our belief that if we work hard and play by the rules, we will be rewarded accordingly. In an ideal world, employees are rewarded and promoted based on their contribution and on their potential to continue to add value in future roles. While most companies have a stated commitment to building merit based organizations, a lack of data and the pervasiveness of conscious and unconscious bias can derail even the most well intentioned efforts to build equitable and merit based talent management systems.
Often, employees find themselves subject to the whims of managers who make talent management decisions based not on performance, but on subjective factors. The result is that less qualified employees are promoted, while better performing and higher skilled co-workers are left to toil away in unchallenging roles. Such a scenario is not only a recipe for employee attrition and lower productivity rates, it is many a company’s Achilles Heel.
As Steve Gonabe, EmPath advisor and former Executive Vice President of Administration at HSBC stresses, “The pervasiveness of conscious and unconscious bias in corporate decision making disadvantages employees, costs companies millions of dollars in unnecessary fees related to hiring, training, and retraining, and stifles diversity in an organization.”
At the root of the problem lie ineffective talent management systems and employee review processes that are not structured to provide bias-free insights. The result is that employee mobility becomes predicated on non-objective factors that disadvantage some employees, while disproportionally benefiting others. Not surprisingly, a study by Deloitte found that only 8 percent of companies believe that their performance management system is highly effective in driving business value.
The reality is that companies do not have adequate, unbiased, actionable insights into employee skills and proficiencies. Thus, companies remain unequipped to eliminate biases related to race, age, ethnic background, religion, and gender. As statistics show, few companies are truly able to make a dent in building a more inclusive and representative workplace.
- African-Americans and Hispanics are underrepresented in STEM jobs relative to their presence in the U.S. workforce.
- Women represent only 7 percent of top executives in Fortune 100 companies.
- Only 10 percent of top management positions in S&P 1500 companies are held by women.
- As of 2017, Hispanics represented up to 17% of the U.S. labor force. Yet only 4.3 percent of executive positions were held by Hispanics.
- According to a recent study, 61 percent of American employees have witnessed or experienced discrimination in the workplace based on age, race, gender or LGBTQ identity.
The EmPath Solution
Imagine a world in which talent management decisions are skill based. No more promotions given or employees hired because they attended a particular school, excelled at networking, had a recognizable last name, were of a particular ethnic background, or possessed one of the many other subjective attributes that influence workplace mobility decisions.
EmPath’s first of its kind, Skills Intelligence Software as a Service solution, not only provides employers with the ability to discover the skills possessed by their employees, but also provides them with valuable insights that enable them to make true, skills based decisions as relate to employee management. Conversely, EmPath’s proprietary technology empowers employees to take charge of their career development, take account of their current skills (even skills they didn’t know they possessed), and chart a roadmap for skill improvement and skill acquisition that will benefit their career.
Driven by our core belief that every individual should be able to strive to reach his or her maximum potential in a way that is equitable, transparent, and achievable, our software is designed to prevent and eliminate bias, both conscious and unconscious, from managerial decisions. Our agnostic approach to race, sex, gender orientation, location, and education means that employers are able to make unbiased decisions about their employees strictly on merit. It also means that employees can rest assured that performance reviews will be centered around skills based, objective factors. Importantly, EmPath’s software can remove the influence of existing biases found within previously compiled data.
Bobby Mehta, EmPath advisor and former CEO of Transunion notes, “Empath’s product offering has the ability to bring data and analytics to bear on the very complicated and important issue of evaluating talent and employee potential in a gender and ethnically neutral manner. The objectivity that the company’s AI driven analytics brings to Talent Management has never been more relevant and critical to the achievement of the ESG goals of every corporation.”
The future of work is an inclusive one in which employees are empowered to understand, improve, and acquire new skills. It is also one in which employees are evaluated and compensated fairly, without bias, based on their capabilities, performance, and potential. This future can only exist if companies possess the requisite tools to effectively assess the skills of their employees and provide them with the ability to up-skill, re-skill, and redeploy efficiently.
We are committed to such a future, is your company?
To learn more about EmPath or to schedule a demo please visit our website at www.empath.net.
