May 13, 2011 Ridding Your Organization of Adverse Impact

Are you using statistics to examine your hiring, promotion and termination decisions? If not, your decisions may have a discriminatory effect and you wouldn't even know it.

The discrimination we're talkiong about, of course, is adverse impact. Adverse impact hides in an organization's policies and practices - it doesn't arise from personal interactions. With adverse impact, the intent of the decision-maker is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether the decision-maker intended to discriminate or not. Adverse impact is a statistical question, and if you're not statistically examining your employment decisions, adverse impact could be hiding in your policies and practices right now.