Indeed’s LaFawn Davis is clear-eyed about the potential (and risk) of workplace AI

LaFawn Davis is an optimist, which might be surprising for someone who has spent nearly two decades doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work. But she’s a realist, too. Of the backlash DEI and ESG programs are receiving she says, “I do believe it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

As Indeed’s chief people and sustainability officer, Davis’s purview is wide-ranging and touches on some of the most important issues for both society and individuals: sustainability, diversity, inclusion and belonging, social impact, inclusive hiring, and AI ethics.

This was Indeed’s first year involved with the World Happiness Report, the world’s largest study on happiness in the workplace. “We have 220 million data points and counting, which is over 20 million people who have answered surveys on what work happiness means,” says Davis, who sits on the board of the World Wellbeing Movement, a nonprofit coalition of business leaders and academics. “Things like flexibility and trust and having a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging.” Indeed partnered with Oxford University to analyze their data to create a Work Wellbeing Score, which job seekers can view for thousands of companies on Indeed. Indeed also recognized the top 20 companies with the highest work well-being with their first-ever “Better Work Awards.”

“Our hope is that we’re able to use our massive amount of data to actually create change,” she says. The goal is to use the information to help companies understand what’s most important to their employees. It’s a retention tool too, Davis says. Employees will stay longer and give more effort, she says, “if they feel like they have psychological safety and a sense of purpose and all of those tangible things that we now know give people a sense of well-being at work.”

With the use of AI, Davis too is both a realist and an optimist. “If we are only consumers of AI, we have a really real risk of AI perpetuating the same human biases that exist today—and worse at scale,” she says.As a nod to how the company views the role of AI in the very human world of hiring—and how important that responsibility is—Indeed has changed the name of its AI framework from “AI ethics” to “Responsible AI.” (“AI ethics” implies a world of compliance with standards, Davis says.)“We want to innovate fast,” she says. “We want to do things as quickly as the landscape is shaping up, but we have to do that in a way that is actually going to be helpful for society.” To that end, Indeed has introduced its four responsible AI principles.

The cornerstone of Indeed’s AI work is to make products that are human-centric, says Davis. “Hiring will always be a fundamentally human process,” she says. “What we’re hoping is that AI and automation just helps to make things faster and fairer by removing some of the decision-making that needs to happen so that humans can focus on the things that matter.”

One of Indeed’s AI products for job seekers is its career services center, where individuals can enter a job title and practice answering job-specific interview questions generated by AI.

The work of expanding opportunity is not only core to Indeed’s mission, it’s a personal cause for Davis, who doesn’t have a college degree. “I always tease people at my company: ‘You would have missed out on amazingness if you didn’t hire me because I didn’t have a college degree,” she says. “I’m absolutely skilled, but I’m not skilled through traditional means.”

Over the past year, the platform has leaned into building opportunities for those who have nontraditional backgrounds. Indeed recently joined the Tear the Paper Ceiling coalition, along with other companies including Google, IBM, and LinkedIn, to help expand their work in skills-first hiring. “As we go into the future, and especially as we look at AI and automation, we really need to look at what the hiring process is doing to screen those people out,” says Davis.

“We want to make sure that our platform works for everyone, no matter what your barrier,” she says. She views Indeed more as a matching platform. For example, Indeed touts that they have helped ​​3.9 million job seekers facing barriers—like a lack of a college degree, having a criminal record, or facing bias due to age, ethnicity, or disability—get hired between 2021 and 2023.Davis wants to create opportunity within Indeed, as well. This past year, Indeed introduced BOOST, a paid internal technical apprenticeship program, in which current employees in nontechnical roles can gain the experience to become software engineers at Indeed. The first cohort started in spring 2024.

Perhaps the area where Davis is the most clear-eyed on the challenges ahead is the DEI backlash at both companies and universities. The end of affirmative action has had a snowball effect, she says, “removing DEI programs from everything.”

“There is definitely a population in the U.S. that is against anything that shifts the power dynamic,” she says. “They’re coming for the schools. They’re going to come for companies and anything else that would help to write that power dynamic.”

Yet despite this hostile landscape, the cutting of DEI programs at companies, Davis remains optimistic. Indeed in doubling down on its commitments to DEI and ESG, and she’s seen other leaders do the same. “We’ll be able to show good financial implications for the companies that actually lean into those things that matter to humans.”

And even though she expects a tough period ahead, “I think on the other side is so much goodness that it will help to reverse some of what we’re seeing right now.”