Actionable Adverse Impact Measurement

Manisha Gupta-57589

Organization Name

Oracle

Description

Posting this on behalf of several customers who expressed a desire to provide a preventative indication of Adverse Impact to catch blind spots within the organization.

Enable Companies to statistically detect and prevent potential discrimination in selection events specially Hires, Promotions, Compensation, Terminations beyond the best practice guidance,

Bias is analyzed for a unit defined by: :

• Establishment ID (Location of Business with 50+ Employees)
• EEO Job Category
• Group Type (Gender, Ethnicity)
• For a Given Period

Affirmative Action plan (usually coincides with financial year). Organizations are audited every 6 months and are expected to provide their data.

Use Case and Business Need

Adverse impact - refers to employment practices that appear neutral but have a discriminatory effect on a protected group. Adverse impact may occur in hiring, promotion, training and development, transfer, layoff, and even performance appraisals. It may be found in an overall procedure or in any step in the overall procedure. A test or selection procedure can be an effective management tool, but no test or selection procedure should be implemented without a thorough understanding of its effectiveness and limitations for the organization, its appropriateness for a specific job, and whether it can be appropriately administered and scored.

Business needs - businesses can inadvertently get into legal trouble through adverse impact discrimination. Managers must recognize the fact that what may, on the surface, appear to be an EEO-neutral employment criterion might on closer examination have a disparate impact on applicants or employees, and perhaps not even benefit the organization in terms of the particular criterion being screened. Adverse impact lawsuits generally involve multiple employees and many years of organizational practice. So the damages claims can be high and the lawsuits costly, and the cases are attractive to attorneys who specialize in handling class actions on a contingent-fee basis. Whenever an organization has a job requirement such as a certain level of education or physical ability or a particular dress or grooming code, a good manager will question whether that criterion really screens for a relevant job attribute and whether that criterion may inadvertently lead to adverse impact discrimination.

HR's Role - HR plays multiple roles in regard to adverse impact discrimination.

1. Identify any issues - HR must make sure that the hiring process, including educational requirements, fitness tests and other factors, avoids intentional discrimination (disparate treatment) and unintentional discrimination (disparate impact). HR must make sure EEO compliance continues after hiring through the entire employment relationship. HR professionals must be alert to such issues that are likely to be missed by typical business managers and see things that other people miss.
2. Effectively Communicate the issue to managers that a seemingly innocent policy or practice may actually subject the organization to litigation.

More details

Determining Adverse Impact - Adverse impact occurs when a decision, practice or policy has a disproportionately negative effect on a protected group, even though the adverse impact may be unintentional. The EEOC guidelines and the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures define adverse impact as "a substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion or other employment decision which works to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex or ethnic group." The agencies have adopted a rule under which they will generally consider any group's selection rate that is less than four-fifths or 80 percent of the selection rate for the group with the highest selection rate as a substantially different rate of selection. If any of the comparison groups do not have a passing rate equal to or greater than "4/5ths" or "80 percent" of the passing rate of the highest group, then it is generally held that evidence of adverse impact exists for the particular selection procedure.

Original Idea Number: 79297c6093

Ahmed Maher K.

Will be helpful idea. Vote up!