The brain is becoming the ultimate workplace sorting hat — the technological version of the magical device that distributes young wizards among Hogwarts houses in theCompanies touting technological tools to assess applicants’ brains promise to dramatically “increase your quality of hires” by measuring the “basic building blocks of the way we think and act.” They claim their tools can even decrease bias in hiring by “relying solely on cognitive ability.
The growing use of brain-oriented wearables in the workplace will undoubtedly put pressure on managers to use the insights gleaned from them to inform hiring and promotion decisions. We are vulnerable to the seductive allure of neuroscientific explanations for complex human phenomena and drawn to measurement even when we don’t know what we should be measuring.
While the commission has yet to clarify how employers can comply with non-discrimination statutes while using technological assessments, it should work to ensure that cognitive and personality testing is limited to employment-related skills lest it intrude on the mental privacy of employees. Assessment tools should also be regularly audited to ensure that they don’t discriminate against candidates based on age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, thoughts or emotions. And companies developing and administering these tests should regularly update them to account for changing contextual and cultural factors.