06.12.20
Stre.me helps employers minimize workforce biases
Doug LeDuc, Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly
Excerpt
Given recent events dominating national news, Jack Patton offered an extremely timely presentation when the first five founders to complete the local version of the gBETA business development program met June 9 to celebrate the occasion.
They had started the six-week program together late in April and concluded it by showing off pitches they honed to attract investment in their startups. The event took place virtually as a COVID-19 adjustment.
Patton is CEO of Stre.me, which helps human resources professionals and their employers minimize biases and resulting inequities.
The software-as-a-service platform it developed to accomplish that manages unconscious biases to improve patient satisfaction and outcomes and hospital profitability. But it also could prove useful for other types of employers, such as “law, health insurance, education, retail, banking and municipalities, specifically first responders,” he said in the presentation.
He could not have known when he started going through the gBETA program that tens of thousands of protesters would be clamoring in the streets for justice every night since May 25, when Minnesotan George Floyd died while begging police to allow him to breathe.
“Bias is pervasive, and every person has bias,” Anne Marie Labenberg, the company’s chief equity officer, said in an email after the pitch celebration.
“The recent demonstrations have greatly increased awareness of the effects of unconscious bias on others, specifically related to law enforcement, but also in the everyday lives of minoritized people,” she said.
“You cannot eliminate all bias, but STRE.ME’s system holds individuals accountable to manage their biases, make better decisions, and, in turn, reduce the bias and inequity that exists in all professions.”
