Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER MARCH 2018 8 NEWS But it's not clear there was a problem to begin with, according to Philip Oreopoulos, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Toronto. "It was a really nice attempt to follow up on some of this litera- ture to try to do something, and they did a great job at trying to execute a pilot and randomized control trial… but given the infra- structure that they already have in place to try to avoid discrimina- tion… I wouldn't be surprised if there was minimal name discrimi- nation going on to begin with." The results weren't that sur- prising because it's not clear the government, based on the way it was running the process, fully understood what it was trying to achieve, said Michael Bach, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Diver- sity and Inclusion in Toronto. "They're trying to eliminate bias in hiring, and I just feel like the methodology they used was very scientific, but the reality is it doesn't necessarily take into con- sideration the human condition." "Just as an example, they looked at groups based on employment equity categories, which are argu- ably very dated. And the whole point of name-blind recruiting is around the bias found in names… but if your name is John Smith, and you're black, well the bias there is not in your name; but if your name is Dimitri Metonev, the bias is in your name but you're white." Screening applicants e project launched nearly one year ago, in April, with federal de- partments wiping out some of the applicants' information during screening, with hopes of strength- ening diversity and inclusion. e pilot examined results from 27 external job processes across 17 participating organizations and involved more than 2,200 candi- dates, of which 685 self-declared as visible minorities. Overall, 54 independent reviewers participat- ed in the pilot, resulting in 4,452 independent screening decisions. Applications requiring anony- mization were assigned to trained anonymizers for redaction, and these applications were then qual- ity controlled via a second trained anonymizer. e information re- dacted was: names, citizenships and country of origin; mailing addresses and phone numbers; educational institutions; refer- ences to organizations, businesses and establishments where general training and professional experi- ence were acquired; languages spoken and written; references to geographical locations; references to employment equity groups; ref- erences to religion; and references to publications. In the end, 47.3 per cent of vis- ible minorities were screened in using traditional methods, com- pared to 46 per cent of visible mi- norities using name-blind recruit- ment. However, 48.7 per cent of all other candidates were screened in using traditional methods, compared to 42 per cent using name-blind recruitment. e government admitted to a few challenges during the study. For one, reviewers were aware they were participating in the project, which could have poten- tially affected their assessments. e process of anonymizing the information also proved to be very labour-intensive, taking between 15 and 20 minutes for each appli- cation, found PSC. "It was more work than expect- ed; in fact, we had some manag- ers who were quite worried about the extra burden," said Borbey. "We identified 20 minutes on average per application was re- quired in order to anonymize, so if you're a manager and you've received 200 applications, that's kind of daunting." As a result, PSC is looking at whether there are some technolo- gy solutions that could eventually make the process easier, he said, "so there could be digital screen- ing, but that's going to require a fair amount of work and we are looking at whether other juris- dictions have some good lessons learned there, and haven't found good examples of where digital screening works perfectly." ere have been attempts at software-based solutions that are intended to do exactly this, to remove names and identifiers, with varying degrees of success, said Bach. "ere will never be a perfect technological solution that will address bias in hiring — you just can't get a computer to do this work, there will always be an op- portunity for a person who has a bias, whatever that bias may be, to eliminate a candidate based on whatever that may be, whether it's race or sexual orientation, who knows. ere will always be a hu- man component to it." PSC also admitted some iden- tifying information may have been inadvertently left uncon- cealed, while some tangible, skill- related information may have been concealed. "at's a risk, that there's so much that's taken out that you lose some context, key context," said Borbey. "We tried to be as thorough as possible in terms of taking out any information that would give a hint of origins, so that leads to a lot of information being excised." It's a Swiss cheese approach, he said, and as a result, "managers in some cases don't have as much information to be able to make a judgment as to whether this is a person that should be allowed to go to the next phase." It would have been a lot easier to just start by stripping out the name, said Oreopoulos. "It may not get rid of personal information and all the identifiers but, in a lot of cases, it may remove a large part of the ability to identify whether a person is coming from an ethnic background or immi- grant background or not; but even if it didn't, one thing it would sug- gest is it's the first impression that might matter, the first thing you see on a resumé is the name and before everything else, you have an initial subconscious reaction that may make you more prone to one type of decision versus an- other," he said. "And before you look at any part of a resumé, you make a decision, so just blinding the name may ac- tually have some impact." The government's process name-blinded a lot of items, said Oreopoulos, "anything that may have indicated their background, and that may have thrown out the baby with the bath water in some- one trying to understand whether this resumé was worth looking at. Basically, you strip everything out, including where they got their education, which may be valuable information to the person trying to make the decision, so they may have complicated it… and that process may have impacted the ability to actually make good hir- ing decisions." e problem is that name-blind hiring doesn't address the system- ic bias that exists, said Bach. While a racialized person or a newcomer to Canada might get an interview, she could still face bias around her lack of Canadian experience or because she speaks with an accent, he said. "I would rather see address- ing of those more systemic issues that are present in the recruiting process, and far more difficult to really deal with," said Bach. "at's why I don't think hiring should be done in an individual format, I think you should always do panel interviewing — it should be a weighted decision and that way you can start to identify biases that are at play that you don't nec- essarily see. You need to be looking at the hiring process in a very ho- listic manner as opposed to these one-offs of 'Let's take off the name and make it work.' Well, no, that's one piece of the puzzle — you've got to look at the whole process." To complement the recent find- ings, the PSC said it will undertake audit work, starting in May, to explore the success rates of appli- cants at key stages of the appoint- ment process. It will also explore how name- blind principles could be included in the design of any future tech- nology changes to the govern- ment's recruitment systems. "You need to be looking at the hiring process in a very holistic manner, as opposed to these one-offs of 'Let's take off the name and make it work.'" NAME-BLIND < pg. 1 Anonymizing information 'labour-intensive' Order your copy today. 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