August 2016
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Tech Tools to Increase Workplace Diversity

Monday, August 8, 2016

This summer, Qualcomm settled a gender discrimination class action lawsuit for $19.5 million. It’s the latest high-profile tech-sector discrimination case, and it’s causing many tech companies to reconsider their hiring and retention policies. Tech companies, in particular, tend to draw criticism for their mostly white male workforces, and with sound reasoning. Numerous studies have indicated more diverse workforces increase an organization’s productivity and profitability. To fix the problem, industry leaders such as Apple, Google, and Intel have spent millions on diversity initiatives and unconscious bias training; however, it’s unclear how successful these programs have been. "In tech companies, things are not getting better nearly as fast as they should," said Laura Mather, founder, and CEO of Unitive software, a product created to remove unconscious bias in the hiring process. "Silicon Valley claims to be a data-driven society. But we look at the data and see not much has changed, yet continue with the same behavior, thinking that if we keep training people, it will go away." Several data-driven tools, like Mather’s Unitive, have been released in the past years to combat the problem. These range from software to remove biases in hiring processes to negotiating pay for freelancers.

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