Automated employment policy tool takes aim at handbook updating pain points

A new automated employment policy engine designed by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati tech subsidiary SixFifty looks to help law firms assist employer clients in navigating operational challenges presented by the pandemic.

The premise behind the “SixFifty Employee Handbook,” which was released today, is relatively straightforward: Clients answer a series of questions that are then used as a basis for generating new employee policies or handbooks using the automated engine.

“The automation engine contains complicated logic that mimics what a lawyer would do when drafting a policy for a client. But we don’t consider that AI or machine learning, although others might,” said Kimball Parker, CEO of SixFifty.

According to Parker, companies are, or at least should be, updating their employment policies more frequently to account for COVID-19′s impact on businesses. What, for example, is the dress code for a Zoom call? What backgrounds should employees use or make sure to avoid altogether? Parker argued that variables such as the vaccine rollout or new COVID-19 variants will only increase the rate at which companies are forced to update their policies.

“That’s maybe the biggest pain point for them. They’ll pay a lawyer to update a handbook, but then they have to update it every year. And actually now it’s not even a year. Every year would almost be reckless. Now you really have to update them probably every month,” Parker said.

But creating an automated engine that can keep up with the rapid evolutions in health and safety guidelines that have accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic required extensive attorney input. Wilson Sonsini lawyers reviewed the firm’s existing bank of employment policies and then provided SixFifty with updates or revisions to account for new business realities such as remote working.

According to Parker, the result was the “most complex piece of automation” that the tech subsidiary has ever done. “We’ve taught a computer to draft employment documents like a lawyer. And we’re going to tweak it and continue to tweak the logic. So like when the CDC comes out with the guidelines about vaccines, that’s going to be incorporated,” he said.

However, creating an automated solution to a problem that companies would theoretically have to pay a lawyer to handle each year won’t necessarily deprive Wilson Sonsini of future revenue. In fact, the firm believes it could help increase the amount of profit it sees from that line of work.

For starters, clients will have to engage with SixFifty’s automated employment engine through either a monthly or annual subscription. Rates will vary depending on the size of the company, since Parker noted that policies tend to become more or less complicated depending on the number of employees an organization maintains.

He also said that because updating handbooks has traditionally cost “tens of thousands of dollars,” companies were avoiding the process—law firms included—altogether. “It’s just not practical for [businesses], and we’re hoping to kind of move it into a model where it’s practical for them to have an updated handbook,” Parker said.

SixFifty is also making some updates of its own. The automated employment policy engine is the first product that the tech subsidiary will roll out with the assistance of third parties, such as various HR platforms.

Parker is hopeful that the move will help to broaden the product’s audience beyond Wilson Sonsini’s typical stable of clients. ”One of the things that excites us about it is that a flower shop or a restaurant or a car dealership can have a Wilson Sonsini-quality handbook. And before that it’s just not possible. I mean, they don’t use Wilson Sonsini. But those companies use HR platforms,” Parker said.