Can New Tech Platforms Reduce Bias in the Workplace? These Startups Are Betting on It

Can an app help make your workplace more equitable?

That was the question that a scrappy group of tech startups, jockeying for more than $100,000 in prize money, sought to tackle last week at the People Ops Tech Pitch Competition in Berkeley, an annual event exploring technological solutions to societal issues like bias and discrimination.

“Tech is not a panacea. We've seen tech used for awful things,” warned Freada Kapor Klein, a founding partner of Kapor Capital, the venture capital firm behind the event. “We've seen tech used in the service of bias and profiling and stereotyping. Tech is a set of tools that can be used for good or for evil or for mixed purposes."

The event comes amid growing mistrust of the tech industry in recent years, as huge firms like Facebook and Google have faced public backlash for compromising the privacy of their users, and governments worldwide have witnessed how popular platforms can be used nefariously to threaten democratic institutions.

But Kapor Klein emphasized that there are also plenty of inspiring innovators out there using technology to address inequality, particularly in the workplace, where women and people of color often find themselves at a distinct disadvantage.

“I want everybody out there to be aware of all these great tools that can make the workplace more welcoming to everybody,” she said.

To that end, the 10 finalist startups, winnowed from a pool of nearly 200, each had five minutes to present their tech-based proposals for reducing workplace bias, as a small group of judges and a larger audience of investors and fellow entrepreneurs listened intently.

One company, called Tilt, made the case that its platform, which manages all aspects of family leave, would help improve retention of women. Another startup, called Skillist, described itself as a job application platform that aims to steer employers away from resumes by showcasing what candidates are actually capable of accomplishing on the job.

Teresa Hodge, CEO of R3 Score, a Baltimore-based company, pitched software to help employers more fairly consider candidates with criminal histories.

The platform emphasizes attributes like education level, employment and community participation, and weighs them against the seriousness of the applicant's criminal record. It then calculates a score similar to a credit score.

“Current tools like criminal background checks pretty much lock individuals out,” Hodge said. “One in three [adult] Americans have an arrest or conviction record. It’s kind of impossible to continue to overlook a third of our population.”

Hodge also noted that, as a black woman in her 50s, she has encountered plenty of bias, even in her effort to fight it.

“If I was a white man, to be honest, with this tool, I would have been funded,” she said. “I've had a couple of potential investors say, ‘But who came up with this idea?’ And in that moment I realized, ‘Oh, you don't think I could have come up with this.’ ”

The judges, however, had no such reservations; Hodge won the competition's first prize and audience choice award.

One of the three judges, Sargun Kaur, who runs an incubator for Google, explained said that the tool had the potential to help employers reduce bias in the employment process and significantly expand certain hiring pools.

“They’ve come up with a very simple solution that's going to impact a number of lives,” she said. “[Employers] have been simply rejecting individuals because of a binary background check. Now they have more information.”