Making Unilever Ecosystem of Talent Sourcing, Assessment, and Management Tools “NYC Bias Audit” Ready

Holistic AI engaged with Unilever Internal HR and Legal professionals to conduct Bias Audits to demonstrate compliance related to the New York City (NYC) Local Law 144 (“NYC Bias Audit” legislation), which will come into effect on 5 July 2023.  

As a company that is at the forefront of employee value proposition and concerned with adverse impact in recruitment, Unilever partnered with Holistic AI to demonstrate their commitment to candidates and employees. Holistic AI conducted audits across the whole set of tools providers, ranging from Talent Sourcing and Matching, Assessment, and Workforce Management. The Audit report is vital to reduce regulatory and reputational risks to the business; it also helps the Talent Advisors to select and vet vendors and adopt technology in a much faster pace.

Challenge

Unilever is a multinational consumer goods company, spanning 190+ countries and employing 148,000 people. To attract, source and manage the number of candidates and employees required to run the business effectively, Unilever uses a range of tools across the multiple brands and countries it operates. Most of these tools are from third-party, ranging from Talent Sourcing and Matching, Assessment, and Workforce Management.  

Conducting Bias Audits across this diverse and fragmented ecosystem of solutions, is a hard challenge given the technological sophistication and scale of the systems. Ensuring compliance in such a scenario is a task that requires a technological solution beyond the typical consultancy, as well as holistic knowledge of the context in which the systems are used in. Another key driver is to how to keep these systems compliant across the year, and with regulations coming in more jurisdictions, there’s a clear need for a solution that is not an “one-off” but a continuous relationship.

Solution

Holistic AI provided a scalable and effective Bias Audit solution to fulfil the requirements of Local Law 144. Working with the Unilever team, they have identified several systems that qualify under the concept of Automated Employment Decision Tool (AEDT), ranging from Talent Sourcing to Workforce Management. Holistic AI has built integrators in its platform to ensure that this analysis and the pull of information is done in an automated fashion, reducing the time and effort to complete an audit.  

As part of the Audit, we conducted training with respect to the legislation, assessed their internal processes and provided recommendations for how to strengthen their internal procedures and protect against any future risks.

Outcome

• Unilever received for each tool:
  ○ Bias Audit report
  ○ Summary of Results
  ○ Additional materials to ensure compliance related with the “NYC Bias Audit” legislation.

• Unilever’s HR management team is provided monthly with a report where continuous tracking of any updates to the NYC legislation or how others (California, New Jersey, etc.) can impact their usage of technology.