Textio

Think of it as a spillover effect of other kinds of discrimination: Women and people of color routinely receive the lowest quality of feedback at work. In particular, they’re more likely to get personality-based feedback—labeled as “shy,” “passionate,” “abrasive,” “pleasant,” or the like, rather than being given feedback about their actual performance and work output. Black women are three times as likely to get such feedback as other employees, according to Textio.

 

Even when that feedback is positive, it isn’t helpful. Textio’s bias interruption and language suggestion platform, called Textio Lift, is designed to break that cycle by helping managers provide specific and actionable feedback. The idea is to limit churn and to create greater opportunites for growth for traditionally underserved workers. The platform identifies exaggerated, non-actionable, and personality-based phrases in performance reviews, and it offers more fair suggestions to replace them with.

 

Textio says its customers include 1,300 companies, including one-third of Fortune 1000 companies, with a total of more than 30 million employees. Clients include McDonald’s, Zillow Group, Samsung, Uber, and Hulu. The company has raised $42.5 million, valuing it at $128 million.