Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision, and global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years.
Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome, Inside the ICE House.
Pete Asch:
Welcome to Inside the ICE House. I'm your host, Pete Asch. Like I'm sure many of our listeners, the TV above my desk was turned away from the typical CNBC for most of late November and December to Fox Sports, so I could keep an eye on the 2022 World Cup. I'll leave the deep dive into the confluence of sports and business to other podcasts, but it was the business side of US Soccer that was the big takeaway for many this time around.
The casual fan may not be familiar, but bonuses are paid to teams depending on how far they advance. For the US, that meant advancing out of the group stage, and getting knocked out in terrible fashion by the Dutch in the round of 16, earned the Federation $13 million. It was not the best result in US history. All the hardware won on the international stage has been won by the far more successful women's team. A team, I should note, that is preparing to compete for a third World Cup in a row this summer.
What made 2022 an unprecedented moment in world soccer is how that bonus was divided. For the first time in the history of this country or any other, the US Federation contract with its players stipulated, "All national team players, regardless of gender, would be given an equitable share." The landmark agreement was signed last year in a ceremony featuring representatives for President Joe Biden's Labor Department, Congress, US Soccer, and most of the roster of US Women's Soccer. The event was culmination of years of effort to get equal pay, treatment, facilities, and media coverage for the team. But unless something changes, the spread of pay equity from the pitch to the boardroom is moving at a snail's pace.
According to the World Economic Forum's 2022 Global Gender Gap Report, it'll take another 132 years to close the global gap. No one should be content to wait another decade for that to happen. And forces are coalescing to leverage the power of legislation, boards, and investing dollars, to quicken the pace.
That brings us to our guest today, Maria Colacurcio, who is the CEO of Syndio. Her company is determined to create the technology to let all companies measure, achieve, and sustain workplace equity in quarters, not years. My conversation with Maria on utilizing HR tech to improve the workplace experience for employees, how employers should be considering pay quality as we head into economic uncertainty, and her own career journey, is coming up after the break.
Speaker 3:
Connecting to opportunity is just part of the hustle.
Speaker 4:
Opportunity is using data to create a competitive advantage.
Speaker 5:
It's raising capital to help companies change the world.
Speaker 6:
It's making complicated financial concepts seem simple.
Speaker 7:
Opportunity is making the dream of home ownership a reality.
Speaker 8:
Writing new rules and redefining the game.
Speaker 9:
And driving the world forward to a greener energy future.
Speaker 10:
Opportunity is setting a goal.
Speaker 11:
And charting a course to get there.
Speaker 3:
Sometimes the only thing standing between you and opportunity, is someone who made the connection.
Speaker 12:
At ICE, we connect people to opportunity.
Pete Asch:
Our guest today is the CEO of Syndio. Prior to Syndio, she co-founded Smartsheet, NYSE ticker SMAR, which went public in 2018 and has been the topic of two episodes of Inside the ICE House, and has held leadership roles at Starbucks and Microsoft. Maria serves on the board of the nonprofit Fair Pay Workplace, and has been named by Goldman Sachs' Builders and Innovator Summit, one of 2022's 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. Welcome, Maria, Inside the ICE House and to the New York Stock Exchange.
Maria Colacurcio:
Thank you so much for having me.
Pete Asch:
So, US Soccer joined volleyball and the official sport of Inside the ICE House, pickleball, in making strides to equalize pay across gender. Do you see that spreading to more mainstream sports? For example, one of the big sub-stories of what Brittney Griner went through was the fact that she was over in Russia having to equalize pay, instead of getting it here in the United States?
Maria Colacurcio:
I think so, yes. So, you talked about earlier the US Women's National team and their fight for equal pay. And I think that stepping up to the main stage has given visibility across industries, sports being a big one. Two of our advisors at Syndio are Steph Curry, he's an investor, cares deeply about this, and wrote about it back in 2018 in the Players Tribune, and now has daughters, and so cares even more, which is typically what happens. When it becomes personal for folks, they get really, really invested.
And on the other side, on the football side, Arik Armstead, who's the captain of the 49ers, that made a big showing this year, is also really taking an interest in advocating for his peers who are women. And I think the more that we see men step up in sports, specifically like these two have done, and start to advocate, we're going to see this continue and build momentum.
Pete Asch:
In addition, on the sports field, I mentioned the business side, and just this morning I saw that Broadridge Financial, which is NYSE ticker BR, announced a partnership with Syndio. How will Broadridge be using your products? And is that agreement an example of what you're hoping that the NYSE and Syndio can build together?
Maria Colacurcio:
Absolutely. So, Broadridge is exciting because Chris Perry, the president, and Naadia Burrows, who runs diversity, equity, and inclusion at that institution, they still are on the cutting-edge because they're in an industry, financial services, that tends to lag a bit. So, a lot of industries have made strides here and progressive companies have stepped up to start utilizing technology to close those gaps, but financial services has been a bit behind.
So, we're excited about Broadridge, because it shows that everybody can be doing this. And they're making a really public commitment, so again, that transparency piece, which is really important, that public commitment is what holds companies accountable.
Pete Asch:
And I really want to go deep into what's happening currently in the space and also the future of it, but I wanted to go back a bit to the beginning, to Syndio's founder, Dr. Zev Eigen's vision for a company dedicated ... And now I'm going to quote him, "Doing good as well as making money." How did the company get its start? And after being introduced to the company while you were at Starbucks, what drew you to that opportunity to take it to the next level?
Maria Colacurcio:
It's a great question, and I think Zev had a really clear vision around what he was trying to do from a philosophical perspective. And that quote encapsulates it so perfectly. He wanted to build something that had an impact on the world. And I think today, we're seeing the downstream effect of that, as so many people go to work looking for purpose-driven work. It's helping us recruit people, it's helping us keep our people, and it's helping us really drive momentum and growth, and scale as a tech company. Because we're not just B2B enterprise tech software, we're also a company with a very clear mission and purpose to change the world.
So, when Zev got started, he first looked at this from the perspective of people analytics, organizational network analysis, and that's where Syndio got its start. And as he drove that, he found that it was a really long sales cycle. It was a super-crowded industry. And so when we joined forces, when I came from Starbucks to take the CEO role, we decided that something he'd been working on as more of a side hustle, this pay equity calculator, was actually more interesting and had more legs, and we pivoted the entire company's trajectory based on that.
Pete Asch:
And I want to go into that idea of taking on for a founder, back in episode 77, we talked to Mark Mader, who grew Smartsheet, a company you co-founded, from a startup with six people to an NYSE listed company. How did your experience having been a founder who handed it off to a scaler, influence your activities now as a scaler working with the founder still?
Maria Colacurcio:
Everybody has different strengths and gifts, and I think I learned so much from watching Mark interact not only with me, but with the other co-founders, in what makes a really solid relationship between founder and CEO, and what characteristics you need to continually be infusing in that relationship as you grow and scale.
And I think Zev and I had that from the beginning, because he doesn't have as much of an interest in the operational aspects of thing, but he's a visionary, he's a builder, he sees around corners. And so, we have this great complementary way of working together that enables him to have vision and enables me to say, "That's actually a little too far out. The market's not going to absorb that right now. It's a great idea, but let's figure out how we can almost diffuse it into its parts of what would land and have product market fit today."
Pete Asch:
And let's go back to that moment. You start on, I think the company had just raised around $5 million in seed money. How did you go around determining what your day-one priority was? And then also, setting up that north star to make sure that you continued along the visions that it set out?
Maria Colacurcio:
It was really clear to me on day one, and one of the reasons that on day one I brought in Rob Porcarelli, who had formerly been the Head of Global Employment Law at Starbucks. He came with me to Syndio. And one of the reasons was because I had seen so many early stage tech companies make the mistake of hiring a seller in the early days. "We have this great product, we think it has product market fit, we've got to find the right enterprise breed seller." And I knew we didn't need a seller, we needed a buyer. And Rob, in his seat at Starbucks, had been the consumer of old, archaic, clunky, pay equity solutions for 13 years. He led the pay equity initiatives at Starbucks for that time. So, what a better person to bring in and actually sell a new and innovative solution, as somebody who had been a consumer of the old way.
So, that was one of the first decisions that I made, that I think really set us up, not only to be innovative in our philosophy around talent ... So, one of the questions my board asked me was, "Let me get this straight. You're bringing in a lawyer to run sales." And it took a conversation to say, "Don't think of him as a lawyer. Think of him as a consumer of the old way. Think of him as the person that's networked in with other heads of global employment law that can really be an advocate to educate the market on this new way, and why it's better, and lend credibility to that new way." I think it still infuses our approach because we look at skills over experiences. We look at, what do you need to have the capacity to do in order to do a role? It doesn't necessarily mean you've done that role before.
Pete Asch:
You mentioned this was your first time being the CEO. Who are some of the people you modeled your own leadership style after? And who did you look to as you took on this brand-new job?
Maria Colacurcio:
I had such a privilege in my career, specifically at Starbucks, to work side by side with many, many veterans. Part of my purview at Starbucks was working on the Veterans Hiring Initiative. And what I learned from those folks are things that I think about on a daily basis when it comes to leadership. It's all about having the courage to fail, because when you fail, you build confidence and that confidence sticks with you as you go about your next thing, working on your next project, figuring out how to grow your next leader.
I think the second thing is, they really put team above self in a way that's so transformational when you embed that into your leadership style. And it's not easy, it's a difficult thing to do, but it's something that has stuck with me in working side by side with them. One of the experiences I think, that had a big impact on how I lead, is there were several of us that went with Starbucks as the sponsor and served with Team Rubicon. We went to Houston and we helped basically get people's muck out of their homes post-hurricane, and it was veterans, it was civilians, and it was first responders. And being in an environment where everything's stripped away, titles are stripped away, looking at how the teams just naturally organized themselves, and how folks that have served just put the team and the objectives of the team first in order to get the job done, it really stuck with me, and really has a big impact on how I lead.
Pete Asch:
Syndio, Smartsheet, Starbucks, Microsoft, all of those are in Seattle, which has become really a tech hub to rival Silicon Valley. You grew up there, I believe. Did you have a sense growing up in that region that it would blossom as it has to being one of the epicenters of tech and future?
Maria Colacurcio:
No clue. It's amazing to me still that I am in the position I'm in, because I went to a liberal arts college, I majored in history, I went on vocal singing scholarships. In so many ways, I have no business being where I am today, and I think it's really because of things that I learned along the way and trying to always, always be curious, and learn from the next experience.
And as I look back, it's pretty obvious that Seattle would grow the way it did. If you look at Amazon, if you look at Microsoft, and then Facebook, and Google, and Meta all putting roots down there, really in this competition for talent, which has become very fierce if you look at developers and engineers. But I think as a kid growing up, even as a teen, adolescent, post-grad, I still was very out of touch with what was happening in Silicon Valley, let alone Seattle.
Pete Asch:
You appeared on the Voices of Athena Podcast in May, and you talked about speaking of education, your father's support of education, he encouraged you and your siblings to become the first in the family to go to college. A lot of people look at education, you mentioned history, singing, not necessarily the direct way into business as you'd expect. But it's all been seen as the path to equality and success, particularly in the United States. Was that what your dad was thinking, encouraging you to get an education? And as you're working with Syndio, is that data, that education, is what opens doors backed up?
Maria Colacurcio:
I think from my dad's perspective ... And it's interesting that you asked this now because we just had him over for dinner two nights ago, and college was a big topic on the agenda. And I asked him, "Do you feel the same you did as when we were growing up? Because when we were growing up, I can recount so many times, 'You just have to get a good education. You kids have got to go to college. I never went to college, your mom didn't finish college. You've got to go to college and get an education.'" And he had a different answer than what I expected. He said that, "These days it doesn't seem like college is necessarily preparing us and the next generation for what they're going to need in terms of skills to succeed in the workplace."
And I don't know yet, I haven't percolated on it enough yet to decide whether I fully agree with him or not, but I do think there's something to this increase in up-skilling, and re-skilling, and how are we looking at our talent? How are we looking at the skills they develop outside of a college education? And are we putting enough behind training and thinking about how to create opportunities for people from all different backgrounds? Because oftentimes, education is not necessarily that leveler, it actually continues to promote disparities. So, I think companies are getting really smart about how to stand up internal universities that look at a person, and again, going back to their skills, their capabilities, and saying, "All right, they don't have a college degree, but look at what they do have."
Pete Asch:
I'm going to guess that the college came up because you have a couple of children approaching the college age. When you're talking to them, I imagine you're not saying, "Don't go to college." But how are you making sure that they get those skills that an employer one day will recognize?
Maria Colacurcio:
We could have a whole separate episode on this, because the mental health and the pressure that kids are under right now is really insane. And it's something that I think as parents, we try to not put that on our kids, but they're putting it on themselves in many cases, and they're looking around them, and they're feeling pressure to become something or to achieve something.
And so, I think you have to walk a really fine line of saying, "Is there the possibility that you could find this combination of vocation and career?" And so, what does that mean? It means, this is something that I have to do, I feel called to do, I want to do, I feel really passionate about. And then tying that to potentially making enough money to earn a living wage.
That advice is what you want to give as a parent, that's what you want to say to your kids. That's what you want to challenge them to try to achieve. But at the same time, you've got to make sure they're getting the skills that they need to make it through life. And you're not always going to get that perfect, purpose-driven career. And perfect doesn't really exist when it comes to a career. A lot of it comes down to understanding that perfect in terms of your college, your post-college, your career, doesn't really exist. And so, you've got to put yourself in situations where you're stretching, and you are getting the skills that you need to just have options.
Pete Asch:
Stretching, making things work. One of the things is as a mother, you took off some time when your kids were born. I was reading your interview, I think from around March 2020, and you discussed how you felt that took your career back significantly and it also made you reflect on how companies were looking at the responsibilities of the home as well as work.
In the past three years with COVID, certainly things have changed with work-life balances, getting by is the rallying cry of parents everywhere. What impact do you think the last three years are going to have for working mothers in particular, but just working parents in general as they navigate this new normal?
Maria Colacurcio:
I have a couple thoughts on this and I live it every day. So, the thoughts are not necessarily founded in data, but it's more anecdotal to my own experience and what I see amongst my peers, my colleagues, people that I speak with on a daily basis.
I think the flexibility of remote work is inherently a really great thing for parents, because it removes that commute, it gives them flexibility. They can be more present with their kids if it's a midday doctor's appointment, or something like that. It also gives parents that aren't necessarily thought of as the primary caretaker, so let's use dads as an example. Pre-COVID, I think it was really tough for men to step up and say, "Hey, I want the afternoon off because my kid's in a play." Versus women, that was a more acceptable thing to say. And so, it removes those barriers as well, which I hope will give men more freedom to get more involved at home, because that ultimately really helps with equity.
The downside and the unintended consequence that I see from this is that people are exhausted and I think they're exhausted and feeling really mentally stressed, because there's so much code switching that goes on in a day now, especially if you have small kids at home. You're in your office, the minute you come out, and I experience this daily, whether it's my four-year-old or my two-year-old, it's all of a sudden you're on. And you might just be trying to sneak to the refrigerator, get a snack or get a drink of water, but all of a sudden you're having to code switch from, I was just in a really difficult meeting giving someone harsh performance review, and now I've got to be mom, and open, and nurturing, and say hello, and make sure I don't ignore my kid. All of that takes an enormous tax, that I don't know that we've realized yet.
Pete Asch:
I believe that you have employees across 32 states. We're dealing with not only remote work, but remote work across time zones. How are you organizing the company to keep bureaucracy at a minimum, while continuing to build a culture that lets you do some of the things we've been talking about, and also keeping everyone on that very important mission that Syndio is on?
Maria Colacurcio:
I love talking about this. I love talking about the employee experience and how can you infuse principles into it that really show that you walk your talk. So, the first thing that we do that is the most important to me, is we're transparent. And transparency to me means, as it relates to our pay equity and our median pay gap. So, twice a year we release to our employees and publicly our pay equity, our cents on the dollar, and our median pay gap.
And median pay gap is a reflection of representation. How are people moving in your company? How are they moving up? Where are there opportunities for promotion and advancement? And then pay equity is, of course, equal work for equal pay, both concepts in which we believe deeply. So, we've got to walk our talk, and publicly and internally tell our employees where they stand twice a year. Even if sometimes the news isn't great.
This is another area where companies aren't perfect. Every single company is going to have a gap and they have to be able to explain that. And the accountability of knowing you're going to disclose it is what keeps you honest to yourself, to your leadership, and to your employees. So, I think that's number one.
Number two, we have to give them flexibility. So, we shut down the company two weeks a year, in between Christmas and New Years, and then the week of the fourth. And that is probably the policy that people love the most. It's not unlimited time off, which we also have, flexible vacation policy, but what it does is it enables everybody to take a breath at the same time. And if you have people who it actually gives them more stress knowing they're off and things are going on, and they feel obligated to check in, and so they don't ever really disconnect, this gives everybody an opportunity to take that time.
And then I think we are really cognizant of communicating why we pay what we pay. And that's one of the most important things companies are learning in this new era of transparency, where they have to post job ranges on any public job posting, they have to put the pay range. And if a company's not in the motion of explaining why they pay what they pay, it can be a difficult conversation. So, we try to really communicate, what are our guidelines for promotions? Which ones are posted internally? Which ones are posted externally? What are our levels? How do you get to a certain place in the level? How do you move up? All of those conversations we try to have.
Pete Asch:
And in the second half I want to really get into how some companies can use Syndio, and also just handle that new legislation that's requiring those pay ranges to be published. But to pay people, you need money, and so the company has to grow, which is, as all companies, organic and also additional investors. You've mentioned a couple of your big name ones, but I want to hear from one of them right now and then talk a little bit about their role. So, I want to listen to Steph Curry.
Steph Curry:
Basically, everything that we do, hopefully, there's a form of inspiration, a form of impact, and a form of leveling the playing field across the board. So, you mentioned the pay equity gap in the company, Syndio, which has huge momentum in terms of creating a template for what it means to pay people what they're worth, pay women what they're worth, decrease that pay gap. We're mission-aligned, but it's an amazing business as well, and that's what Penny Jar is about, identifying those companies that have huge opportunity, huge scale, great leaders, but are having a huge impact as well.
Pete Asch:
How did you connect with the Currys? And what role do celebrities and athletes like the Currys, like Sue Bird, like Ryan Nece and Armstead that we mentioned earlier, play in Syndio's mission?
Maria Colacurcio:
The Currys are phenomenal and I think, again, going back to the article that Steph wrote in the Players Tribune, you just know that this actually matters, this is not a performative effort on his part, but I think the way that we came to know Steph was through Penny Jar. And Penny Jar is run by a couple of folks who, the reason we picked them and how this came about is we had carved out an element of a round for strategic investors, and it was really important to us as leaders in the company that we start to make our cap table look like how we wanted it to look in terms of walking our talk. We needed more women of color as angel investors or LPs. We needed a Black-led VC firm like Concrete Rose as an investor on our cap table, and that really mattered.
So, as part of that, we're looking for strategic investors and Penny Jar and the folks that run it are so diligent about, again, not just purpose-driven, mission-driven orientation, but also what companies make sense in terms of ultimately driving an outcome and being good business and actually bringing this to market in a way that's going to scale and make a difference. And so, seeing that and seeing the diligence that they put on us and what they put us through in terms of the thoughtful diligence, really made it clear that this was an organization that we wanted to have invested.
Pete Asch:
I think only 2% of VC funds go towards companies being run by women. Have you seen an impact of having your board more diverse, that actually opens up other opportunities for related businesses in the space?
Maria Colacurcio:
Absolutely. When you bring on an investor like a Concrete Rose or work with someone like Ryan Nece, they have a perspective that we need. They're talking with entrepreneurs on a daily basis that can infuse your business not only from a talent perspective but just from a diversity of thought perspective that makes you a better company.
And so, if you go down the path of sticking with investors that all look the same or come from the same backgrounds, because again, we're not just talking about gender, race, ethnicity, diversity in terms of people that come from diverse backgrounds, it's also economic situations, as we talked about earlier, educational differences, all of those things play into a better way of running a business because you have more and new perspectives. And so, they've played a huge role and have been very active post-investment, which is something you always want to see as a CEO.
You don't just want a check. At the stage that we're at in the stage we've been at through our series A, series B and series C, you want investors and folks sitting on your board like a Fern Mandelbaum from Emerson Collective, who is extremely involved. And she's also a professor at Stanford and teaches diversity and equity and inclusion by design. She's teaching business leaders how to create teams in their organizations and looking at that from an equitable perspective. So, having that on my cap table makes a huge difference, because now they're going to push us in different directions other than just one specific direction around making money or one specific direction around being mission-driven. It's really the blend that you need.
Pete Asch:
And after the break, we'll get into that blend as we discuss how Syndio is putting true value to the S of ESG, and Maria's vision for the company in the years to come. We'll be right back.
Speaker 15:
When you hear the word sustainability, you think, "Too big." When you feel you have to do something, you think, "Too complicated." Hold on, think about your decisions, get closer. Those that are big or small for you, your decisions and other people's decisions, those that have to be made every day. Step back a little. Think of the decisions that add up to many more. There are millions of decisions that change everything little by little, for the better.
Now think about who can help you make better decisions, and there we are. So, that what you save, the planet saves too. To keep moving forward without leaving anyone behind. And now when you hear the word sustainability, you think, "Opportunities." At BBVA, we're putting new solutions at your fingertips in order to build a greener and more inclusive future. BBVA, creating opportunities.
Pete Asch:
Welcome back. Before the break we were talking a little about the investing side, but also when you're making a business argument for your products, you need to put some real numbers behind it. And several of our episodes last year focused on different ways companies like ICE are putting actual value on things like the environmental impact when reporting ESG. How is Syndio able to do that with equality and equity?
Maria Colacurcio:
ESG has been an interesting topic because the S in ESG is so opaque. If you think about the S, it's social, what does that even mean? It's very undefined, it's very mushy. And in anything mushy, you've got a bunch of different people defining it. What that means is, when people talk about ESG, they have a certain definition in their minds, which may or may not include the social part. They might be thinking about purely environmental or governance or compliance.
And so, when we partnered with the New York Stock Exchange, the idea was let's bring some measurement, some muscle, some accountability, some definition to the S, to this sort of nebulous social. And to us, that means, are you looking at how you are providing opportunities in your organization? There's metrics that can define this very clearly. It's pay equity, cents on the dollar. Do you have equal pay for equal work? And the median pay gap. Are you making progress to reduce that over time?
Going back to what I said earlier, no company's perfect, but it is a really great indicator starting with, are you willing to disclose it? If you're willing to disclose it, that means you're willing to put some commitment behind it, to make progress against it. So, we really believe that if we can provide technology, which makes it easy for companies to start to address the S in ESG, first beginning with let's define it and then start to make progress against it over time, that's where the S becomes very, very powerful.
Pete Asch:
And speaking of defining, there's a phrase that I've heard you use, that I wanted you to define for our audience, you've used the phrase opportunity equity. What does that mean specifically for women in the workplace, and how do companies change their opportunity equity?
Maria Colacurcio:
Opportunity equity relates to how people move within an organization and are they being given opportunities for that movement equitably? If you think about it, you have 100% chance of missing out on internal talent that you don't consider for an opportunity. And this happens in a lot of companies.
So, when we think about opportunity equity, it's about measuring and looking at how people are moving and are you offering advancement opportunities, even laterally? So, if you think about my career trajectory at Starbucks, I was in communications, I moved to finance. Finance actually had a higher paying range for the level I currently sat at. So, in that case, a lateral move was actually a uptick in salary. So, how are you providing those opportunities to your employees and are you sure that you're providing them fairly?
Pete Asch:
And speaking of opportunity, is there a strategy for when you're trying to get involved with not just companies but also organizations that can really get in front of stakeholders? I'm thinking of the Fair Pay Workplace, which is founded by Syndio's founder, as well as organizations like the New York Stock Exchange's Board Advisory Committee. Is there a strategy to get in front of those kind of groups and basically have them do the heavy lifting for what you're hoping to do with Syndio?
Maria Colacurcio:
So, when Zev and I founded Fair Pay Workplace, it was really at the request of our customers, and I'll explain a little bit why. So, our customers were doing all of this work. They were using analytics and data and technology to analyze and resolve their pay gaps. And so, they knew penny for penny, dollar for dollar, whether they had equal pay for equal work. And most of the time, they did, after implementing, obviously, our software.
But what would happen is every equal payday, there would be all sorts of announcements and proclamations from various companies that our customers knew were not doing this in a way that followed proper methodology. They were greasing the skids, they were gerrymandering it, they were having their lawyers squint at the data and say, "Yeah, I can see how these two people aren't necessarily like for like, so let's exclude them." And they said, "Can there be a way for us to certify that we're doing this well, we're doing this by the right rules and standards?" And so, that's why we created Fair Pay Workplace, to give our customers that third-party validation that they're doing this by the book. They're not doing anything fishy or hiding anything in their process.
And in relationships like the ones we have with the New York Stock Exchange, I think it's really thinking about, where are the organizations that care deeply about this and are simply looking to provide their customers, their listed companies, with a better way to address something like the S in ESG? And they inherently know that technology is a way to do that, because you're going to be able to do it much faster for less dollars out the door. And to me, it's about looking for like-minded organizations, much like you look for like-minded investors, you've got to have people that really believe in the mission. And if you can find folks and partners that believe in the mission, that's entrepreneur 101, you've got to find partnerships in order to scale.
Pete Asch:
And you mentioned some companies massaging the data, greenwashing is what they refer to that for the environmental side, but there's also with the changing rules, there's verbiage, there's rules coming in, things like a recent Washington State law that says that, "Equal pay for similarly employed workers." How has Syndio helped clients interpret what that actually means, and then also prove as the regulatory environment changes, that they are being above board on everything?
Maria Colacurcio:
There's so much that's happened in the landscape over the past 12 to 18 months in pay transparency alone. So, just recently we were looking at a state by state landscape where Colorado had very strong pay transparency laws. And now it's New York, it's New Jersey, it's Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington. It's spreading like wildfire.
And one of the things that's good about the pay transparency laws, so specifically you have to post a pay range with a job posting, is that it is providing that transparency so that employees have the opportunity to see, what's this job make when it's net new? And that's posing a challenge for companies, because it has a high degree of what we call pay explainability. You've got high pay explainability requirements now where companies have to be able to go to that employee and explain why do they pay what they pay. And many companies are not prepared for this.
So, 79% of companies in those states and about a fifth of workers, are going to be impacted by some kind of pay transparency legislation as of today, but I'm sure more are coming. And about 35% of companies when we surveyed them, felt prepared and ready to post job ranges. So, this is something that we work with our customers on all the time. And right now, sometimes that work is more geared toward what you said, which is how do I define, how do I interpret this particular statute? Right now, I would say more of that work is around, "How do I communicate? What do I tell my employees? How do I approach my all hands meeting? What are the talking points that I should use? Should I take this public? Should I disclose my median pay gap? What about my voluntary EEO-1, is that something I should do?" We're having these conversations daily now with our customers.
Pete Asch:
What are some of the benefits that employers see from being transparent on compensation?
Maria Colacurcio:
I think one of the benefits employers see is number one, this is still early, and so if you can see this transparency tidal wave coming and just dive right into it. So, a great example of this is Microsoft. About a month or two ago, Microsoft voluntarily released their intention to now show their median pay gap. They voluntarily disclosed their EEO-1. They voluntarily disclosed a bunch of things around representation.
So, if you can take that approach as an employer and say, "The wave is coming, I'm going to jump in, I'm going to be at the forefront of this." I think you do generate a ton of goodwill, loyalty and trust from your employees. And transparency and trust are two sides of the same coin. So, if you give that transparency to your people ahead of what's legally required by law, they're going to trust you more and likely be more productive and stay in role. Because even with all the layoffs, even with all the volatility in the macro environment, companies are still trying to figure out, "How do we retain our best people?" And we really believe this is a way to do that.
Pete Asch:
Speaking of retaining your best people, and we've been talking about pay, but you wrote in Fortune last year that, and I'm quoting you now, "Pay is the foundation of workplace equity and no compensation decision is more important than your starting salary. But there are also several other aspects that a potential employee should consider when assessing an opportunity." What are some of the non-direct starting salary compensation sources of equity that employees should be using their power to assess right now?
Maria Colacurcio:
It's still a great time for employees, and I think we're seeing employees continue ... And I don't believe it's going to go away, this activist employee, this employee that found a way to have a voice and doesn't want to lose that voice. And that's something we should pay attention to as leaders. People want to be heard, they want to have a voice.
And I think one of the things employees can do is in addition to asking about a company's stance on transparency, asking for the pay range, things of that nature, they can also ask what a company's stance is on pay equity. So, "Do you engage in pay equity analyses? How often? Do you release a summary of results? If not, why not? Where am I in pay range? What's it going to take for me to move up to the next pay range?" These are all questions that I think more and more employees are asking and being empowered to ask, specifically in the interview cycle, which will give them a sense for what to expect when they become an actual employee at that company, if they choose to do so.
Pete Asch:
As increased accessibility to salary data comes from either individual companies or because of these legislations, does that create a virtual cycle where more and more data can be used by your products to show more and more real values and then show how things are changing over time?
Maria Colacurcio:
I think so. We have a really interesting couple of use cases, because we do have so many companies that are Fortune 2000 and what they're always after is benchmarking. They want to know, "How do I stack up against other companies in my industry? How do I stack up on my workplace equity against other companies in my area?" And these are all things that are very top of mind for leaders. So, I think having access to this data ... And there's things like compensation.io, which was a spinoff of the levels.fyi, just came out, scraping all of the salary pay range information and trying to provide a one-stop shop. And what's striking about that is that the ranges are still quite wide.
So, there were some job postings that said, "We're hiring someone in the ranges 90K to 500K." These are ranges that are not going to pass the good faith smell test, if you will. And so, I think as the data gets better, as companies start to get more rigorous about the data that they're putting out publicly, there's tremendous opportunities for not just our company but other tech companies. And a As You Sow report that came out recently, I think a couple of months ago, they actually did just that and that they went out and scraped all public EEO-1 disclosures, of which there were more than I expected. And were able to make a very clear tie between public EEO-1 disclosure, because again, accountability, giving that sunlight, it's the best disinfectant, and actual results. So, business performance, financial results.
Pete Asch:
You mentioned scraping a few times, which is the telltale sign that there's some machine learning and AI going on in the background. Is Syndio leveraging that technology as well for your products?
Maria Colacurcio:
We are leveraging machine learning. I would be hesitant to say we're leveraging true AI at this point. I think there's a lot of opportunities now with ChatGPT to infuse that into making some of our products and development more efficient. But one of the ways that we think about machine learning is just looking at a dataset and saying, "If you're a hotel, for example..." And we already have 15 hotels as customers.
There's the first part of the process if you've never done a pay equity analysis before, is probably the most cumbersome on the part of the customer, because what they have to do is they have to put their employees into groups. So, when you think about equal work for equal pay, what's the equal work? Is an executive assistant the same as an assistant? Should those be compared or should they be separate? And so, one area where machine learning can be really helpful is it can say, "All right, you're a hotel. We're going to look at the grouping schema of these other 15 hotels and we're going to assume and predict with 75% accuracy what groups you should have." And so, it plays a big part in reducing that time to value for new customers who haven't done this before.
Pete Asch:
I was also reading, I'm not sure if you use machine learning for this, but a report based on Syndio data about management opportunity gaps. And this was in the UK, and it found that in the northeast, 18% opportunity. In Scotland, 19% opportunity. And it jumped to 50% when you look in London. Basically, that there's this significant variance based on the data, even across such a small area as we're talking just a small part of a smaller country.
As we begin to think about state enacted pay gap reporting laws and other rules, how does this very micro changes over a space impact how you're thinking about not just your product and the need for your product, but also how change can be adapted over time, if it's even just within a small geographic area, very little change can be predicted based on the rules?
Maria Colacurcio:
It's very interesting to watch Europe and to watch how our pay equity laws are starting to influence Europe. And Europe's focus on median pay gap is starting to come to the States. And I think you see a couple of examples of that. If you look at the BNP Paribas case, which was a big banking case, I don't know, six months ago now, they had a settlement and the tribunal actually as part of the settlement said, "You need to do ongoing pay equity analyses." This was a big first for Europe, because they're typically more focused on the median pay gap reporting, which again shows representation, movement, how people are situated. So, we're starting to influence them from that perspective.
And then I think what you're talking about, the opportunity gap, you're seeing that language more and more and more in the US, and I think one thing that leaders listening to this podcast should be aware of is that pay transparency is here, it's inevitable. And the next wave that I believe is coming down the pike from a regulatory perspective is really opportunity transparency. And that's all about median pay gap reporting, how are people being promoted? How are they represented at the highest levels of your company? So, I think to the degree of geographical influences, we're really starting to see that cross-continent influence occur in how we're looking at legislation and compliance.
Pete Asch:
What needs to happen where what we've been discussing is just standard operating procedure for companies across the globe?
Maria Colacurcio:
There's a lot of research, I think it was Gartner that put something out around CFOs, and CFOs really believe in ESG. And it's a little counterintuitive. I think if you're reading the news, you might think that CFOs are feeling pretty skeptical or pretty down on this concept, but the research report from Gartner showed that CFOs really saw a connection to a strong ESG program to the ability to raise capital and also to create business value.
So, you've got the chief financial officer of organizations saying, "This is important, we should be focused on it." I think how is the next step. You've got companies that put it all together and keep it together and have a sustainability, the CSR of olds now transformed into an ESG role. I think other companies are embedding it under the CFO because it has such an impact on talent and talent acquisition, and that's the biggest item on any P&L right now. And other organizations are piece parting it into different parts of the organization. So, workplace equity might sit in compensation or DEI.
I do think, assuming we can start to see some metrics and accountability around the S element of ESG, that you will start to see companies bring some of these concepts together. So, if they have sustainability, they'll start to put social justice and workplace equity in that same bucket. But it really depends, because right now, as we talked about, the S is still so undefined, so we've got to focus on defining that first and making it very clear what does it mean, before we can think about organizationally structuring companies to have success against it.
Pete Asch:
And speaking of CFOs, a lot of them are looking at the economy right now, a lot of uncertainty. You mentioned earlier that the labor market still is pretty tight, but it seems like every day a major company is announcing a reduction in force or a RIF.
Two decades ago, the floor below us, about 90 feet below us, had three to 5,000 traders working every day, and about 90% of them now work in other places. And one of the things we know from our own research is that a lot of the modest gains in the number of women and diverse traders working on our floor was greatly reduced by that reduction of 90%. So, as a company approaches a RIF, how do they make sure they don't undo or potentially worsen any successes they've already seen in their diversity efforts?
Maria Colacurcio:
I'm glad to hear you ask that because a lot of the old fashioned thinking around this, last in, first out, it really exacerbates the differences and puts the pressure on folks that are already disproportionately impacted from things like this, because times of crisis doesn't level the playing field, it actually exacerbates the differences on those who are already most disadvantaged in a lot of cases.
So, companies have to really shy away from using some of those old "tried and true methods" like last in, first out, and they've got to apply data analytics to this process. So, a lot of companies do adverse impact analysis. It's a pretty standard thing that employment legal folks will require, meaning, ensuring through an analysis that you're not having a disproportionate impact on women, on people of color as you do the reduction in force.
But I really believe in what we help our customers do at Syndio is be more forward thinking than that, because what most companies don't do and what the leaders do in workplace equity is they look at the workforce that remains. So, you think about, "I'm going to do an analysis on the chunk that I'm cutting out and that I'm letting go of, and make sure I'm not creating disparities in that action." But what about who's left? What does that look like? You've now completely restructured. You have people taking on additional work. Are you doing analysis to ensure that post-reduction-in-force you still have an equitable workplace?
Pete Asch:
Well, as you wrapped up, I think you've said a few times, "I could talk a lot more about this topic or that topic." We're talking to a podcast audience, you have your own podcast, so I wanted to give you a second to plug your podcast, where listeners can find it, and some of the topics that you've been covering recently.
Maria Colacurcio:
Thanks. Our podcast is called The Shift: Finding Equity at Work. And Sean Mendy, who is one of the partners at Concrete Rose that I mentioned previously, he's my co-host and we interview business leaders. We've interviewed folks like Dan Hesse, and he talked about the importance of culture when he took over Sprint, and he's now chairman of the board at Akamai. We've interviewed just absolute phenomenal leaders like Stacy Brown-Philpot, who's on the board of HP. She ran TaskRabbit. It's a podcast for people who are looking for actionable ways to address workplace equity in their companies.
Pete Asch:
And the final question, we touched on it, but the NYSE and Syndio announced a collaboration in late 2022, to offer your products to NYSE listed companies. As 2023 gets underway, what else are you working on to expand not just your company's reach but its purpose?
Maria Colacurcio:
In 2023, we will be really focused on expanding beyond just pay equity. So, one of the tenets of the relationship with the New York Stock Exchange was really about, how do we go beyond just equal work for equal pay? Because if you think about it, that just scratches the surface. We've really got to expand and address opportunity, movement, promotion, representation, in order to fulfill the mission of closing the wealth gap, which is where we started. So, that will be the focus for us. We've done really well getting companies across the finish line for pay equity, how do we now expand that to also address things like the median pay gap?
Pete Asch:
Thanks so much.
Maria Colacurcio:
Thanks for having me.
Pete Asch:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Maria Colacurcio, CEO of Syndio. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes, so other folks know where to find us. Got a question or comment you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @ICEHousePodcast. Our show is produced by Ian Wolff. I'm Pete Asch, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
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