Equity Served Hot

In this episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast, Chad and Cheese chat with Maria Colacurcio, CEO at Syndio, Alim Dhanji, CHRO, TD SYNNEX, and Ana White, EVP and Chief People Officer at Lumen to discuss the critical issues surrounding workplace equity, the importance of data-driven approaches, and the impact of recent legal changes on DEI initiatives. The conversation highlights the need for transparency, the role of AI in reducing bias, and real stories of how pay equity adjustments have positively affected employees' lives. Achieving equity is an ongoing journey that requires commitment from leadership and a culture of inclusion.

ENJOY!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

(updated 10/23/24)

Joel (00:28.839)

That's your two favorite average white guys aka the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always by Chad Sowash and boy do we have a lineup today. We're talking to Maria Colacurcio CEO at Syndio, Ana White, EVP and Chief People Officer at Lumen Technologies and Alim Dhanji CHRO at TD SYNNEX. Everyone welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.

Chad (00:37.832)

Hello

Chad (00:54.827)

That's a lineup.

That's a lineup, kids. Wow.

Joel (01:00.135)

They are shocked and awed with no comment whatsoever. So let's get to some Twitter bios. know Maria, Maria's got something to say. Give us a little bit about you and then we'll go around the horn here. Maria Colacurcio.

Maria Colacurcio (01:14.518)

Thank you, sounds great. Thanks for having us today. So Maria Colacurcio, as was said, I'm the CEO of Syndio. We help companies figure out how to value their human capital. I'm a mom of seven and I would argue I make the best homemade meatballs on the West Coast.

Chad (01:30.677)

I wanna try them. I wanna try them.

Maria Colacurcio (01:34.69)

So come at me with that.

Joel (01:37.063)

I'll be over by seven. I'll be over by seven. All right, Alim, let's roll over to you. What's your signature dish, Alim?

Maria Colacurcio (01:40.744)

Only on Sundays. Only on Sundays.

Alim Dhanji (01:46.3)

Mine has to be jerk chicken. So I think we're good with the protein side. Need a starch next. Yes, Alim Dhanji, 25 years in HR. I've gone in and out of HR. I've led Adidas Canada as president. So I've got a little bit of commercial perspective and kind of scared, but also excited to be on this podcast. Let's go.

Chad (01:48.965)

Ooh, nice.

Chad (02:09.045)

You're welcome.

Joel (02:10.215)

Did you say Adidas Canada?

Alim Dhanji (02:13.648)

That's right.

Joel (02:14.599)

Very nice.

Joel (02:19.089)

All right, Ann, it's your turn.

Ana White (02:21.396)

Thank you so much, Joel and Chad, for having us. I'm the CHRO, our Chief People Officer at Lumen Technologies. Before that, I was the head of HR at F5, a cybersecurity company in Seattle. And before that, almost 20 years at Microsoft. So I'm really happy to be here. And I don't have very many signature dishes because my husband is the cook, but I do love to make lasagna.

Chad (02:48.287)

Very nice. Yeah. All of those are winning by the way. Yes, that is, that's awesome. So I guess you're all wondering why we called you today for this meeting. no, literally reached out to Maria and we started, obviously it's hard not to see these days. The news is consistently saying, we're pulling out of DEI. We're pulling out of equity. Hell, SHRM, the Society of Human Resources Management. They actually took.

Joel (02:52.167)

Yes, they are.

Maria Colacurcio (02:58.125)

Okay.

Chad (03:15.869)

Equity out of now they're just I&D. They even switch things around, right? So at the end of the day, why is equity in itself? We're going to focus on equity right now. Why is it taking a hit? The OCCP, the Office of Contract Compliance Programs have some states like Louisiana that are averaging female pay at 69 cents on the dollar for every man. And on a national scale, black people are earning 76 cents on the dollar.

Hispanic people, 73 cents on the dollar. Why? When we do need equity so badly, why is it taking a hit? Why is this lessening in priority?

Maria Colacurcio (03:50.882)

All right, so I can start. Thanks again for having us today. I think the really exciting thing that you're going to hear from Alim and Ana today is that when there's leadership backing and true commitment to equity, it's not waning. It's actually coming in full force from companies that are staying true to that commitment.

Chad (04:02.005)

Mm-hmm.

Maria Colacurcio (04:17.14)

I honestly think the old way of addressing things like pay inequity just weren't incredibly effective. Companies were focusing on symptoms, not necessarily the causes. And so I think if you look at, in particular, the DEI industry over the course of the past maybe one or two decades, they were doing things like training that weren't incredibly effective. There was some unlawful behavior in terms of favoring and disfavoring certain groups, which got them into trouble. Looking at symptoms, not root causes, identifying things that were...

Chad (04:22.603)

Mm-hmm.

Maria Colacurcio (04:46.782)

Not pushing the ball forward in terms of having lawful goals versus unlawful quotas, things like that. So I think that pendulum has started to swing and unfortunately it's swung really, really far.

Chad (04:58.379)

So as we dig into like Pew research, women's pay relative to men's pay drops most sharply around 35 to 44. You talk about the root causes versus the symptoms. What are they? Mean, we can see where it's happening and I would assume why it's happening or otherwise. I mean, why up front and how long does it actually take? mean, obviously, 35 to 44, that demographic for females get hit hardest.

Maria Colacurcio (05:30.11)

Yeah, from a gender perspective, there's research on the motherhood penalty that's pretty substantial. But I want to let Alim speak to this, because I think he has a good point of view.

Alim Dhanji (05:42.564)

Yeah, as a new parent, I've got a kid now that's nine and one that's seven, and I'm in a same sex relationship. So I've had to understand that process from just being a parent, not necessarily a woman, but it is a tremendous feat having a child and then raising them and having that support. When you don't have that support, it does detract you and potentially pull you out of work.

Chad (06:01.739)

Mm-hmm.

Alim Dhanji (06:10.648)

Actually, another topic that I've gotten right into the last couple of years is menopause. And that kind of, you know, always raises eyebrows when a guy starts talking about menopause. But as I started to learn a little bit more about it and realized that the impact that women have, particularly in that demographic and when there's not enough support in the workplace, it really creates an inequitable situation because men arguably have a better chance of succeeding at careers because they're not dealing with the same issues as someone who has menopause. And so I think that if you equal the playing field there and have workplace practices that are more fair and have less stigma around it, then you have a better chance of having a fair situation out of both genders. So I think that could be a factor. It's probably not the only factor.

Chad (07:03.349)

So Ana, what are your thoughts on root causes?

Ana White (07:05.723)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think the 35 to 44 is a really good point. And that's something we watch for closely in our demographics and overall, not only age, but gender, race, ethnicity, et cetera. And I think there's a wide variety of things that go into it. What we care about the most though is the equity itself and what we do about it. And that's where the partnership with Maria's organization, Syndio, has really changed the game on pay equity in general. And I think about equity, much more broadly than pay equity. I also think about it as workforce equity, how you hire, how you promote, how you bring people in and participation equity. Are you really allowing everyone to have an equal voice? So I kind of think of equity as very, very broad and looking at some of the root causes, gender, but far beyond that as well.

Chad (07:57.109)

Talk about the partnership with Syndio. How is that actually helping impact?

Ana White (07:59.521)

Yeah, yeah, it's helped a lot. We used to do pay equity ourselves internally. When we did it, yeah, yeah, we have actually, I have to give kudos to our team. We have a good internal data analytics team. So along with legal counsel, we did periodic pay equity analysis. And it took about 10 weeks to complete it. And frankly, it used a lot of internal resources for that.

Chad (08:07.421)

How? How did you do that? Was it spreadsheets?

Ana White (08:28.423)

So we wanted a solution that would give us more frequent insights and that would also look at root cause prevention, not just remediation. So when we partnered with Syndio, it allowed us to monitor pay equity more frequently and the analysis now takes hours rather than months of a period of time. So we do monthly pay equity audits, which I feel really good about. And at some point in time, I can tell you a cool story about that too.

Joel (08:56.615)

One of the things that intrigued me about this issue is how subjective it is. I feel like all of you are champions of data in terms of gaining progress, gaining change in organizations. Each of you talk in general terms of how you've used data to promote change within your organization.

Chad (08:56.756)

Okay.

Alim Dhanji (09:17.536)

I think from my perspective, you know, when you start quoting the disparity between men and women, for example, looking at gender inequity, it's striking because that's a fact. It's not irrefutable in a sense. I think then you can start to have real conversations around what it's going to take to close that gap. And understanding the root causes is one aspect. But then there's obviously an economic impact and you've got to plan for it just like you would with any other business strategy and thinking through about what roles specifically do we have in equity? Are there specific locations, countries, et cetera? And I think that if you use data to be more thoughtful and planful, can create actions that are very specific on one hand. What I really like about Syndio is the Pay Finder software. And I think what that does for us is make sure that we have governance throughout the pay process, not only for new joiners, but also as we promote people, making sure that we are paying people at the right level, within the right range. And you can have different discussions with the business leaders.

Joel (10:32.177)

So there's data on the front end, sort of like, let's pay people, like pay everyone equally. How about on the results side of it? Like paying people equally means what that the C-suite would care about or being more equity means what in terms of more products sold, more cost, like what on that side of things, where does data play a role? Or does it?

Alim Dhanji (10:56.988)

I think it definitely does. We just wrapped up our engagement survey, for example, and I see direct correlations between the questions that we ask around equitable practices and fairness and engagement. That's a key driver for us. There's been dozens and dozens of studies out there that tell you if you've got higher levels of engagement in the workplace that correlates with higher levels of customer service and therefore profitable growth. So it's not just common sense, it's actually a causal relationship and data tells us that. So you have better economic output as a result of equity.

Maria Colacurcio (11:28.226)

Was just going to kind of piggyback onto that because TD SYNNEX has such a cool story. Actually Lumen does too. You know, when we're talking about solutions for talent because of pay transparency, which started with…

Joel (11:40.026)

Ana?

Ana White (11:40.065)

Yeah, I completely agree, Alim. Go ahead, Maria.

Maria Colacurcio (11:56.364)

…pay ranges for advertised roles need to be public. About one third of employees across the United States are now covered by some kind of pay transparency legislation. But the EU Directive is really supercharging that because now you've got multinational companies with more and more disclosure company. So as a recruiter, you're sitting across the virtual or actual table from a candidate that has so much information. They have so much information at their fingertips. And now you've got to articulate not just the range, but why a candidate is low, medium, or high in that range, and really be clear about what the company values. So one of the things that I think is cool about the stories from these two companies is that when you put in the hands of your frontline, not just the range that's based on competitive and market, but also the range that's based on internal equity and how people that are in your company are actually being paid today, and the blend is what you're offering that candidate, but you can explain it.

You see time-to-fill actually accelerate. You see offer acceptance go up, which makes sense because people want to work for a company that actually values them. So if at the very beginning of that relationship between employee and employer, they're hearing that, so this means when I come in, they're not going to hire someone that works for me, that's going to get paid more than me. And I think that's a big part of it. But Ana, what would you say?

Ana White (13:17.792)

Yeah, completely agree. Yeah, I completely agree, Maria. We're also using Pay Finder. We have over 50 of our recruiters that are actively using it. And it's super helpful with very real-time data to make sure we're doing the right thing when we bring in talent. And not only candidates appreciate that, but internal employees appreciate that. And going back to Alim's point earlier, we also do frequent surveys, maybe too many.

for our employees, but we love to hear kind of how they're thinking and feeling. We're about to kick off our next one next week. And we feel really strongly that equity, inclusion, diversity, allyship, all of that makes a difference in the employee experience and absolutely makes a difference in the customer experience. And then we think our company performance all-ups. It directly interrelates.

Joel (14:01.809)

Hmm.

Ana White (14:05.949)

And I'm a huge fan of trying to be as objective as possible as a math major. So I love on the pay equity side, it's very data oriented.

Chad (14:14.899)

So when you're taking a look at all that data, because you've got all the external data and then you've got obviously where the landscape starts to push. Let's say for instance, just from a technology standpoint, developers get a push and externally they're getting paid more. Now you have to, you're taking that external data internally saying, okay, now we've got to pay more. Now there's got to be not just paying the next person coming through the door more, you've got to equalize internally, correct?

How do you manage that just from a balancing act standpoint?

Ana White (14:48.223)

Challenge. I'll be honest. I'll be honest because the market can move quickly and internally you can't always keep up with the market. That's why you have to do these cross checks and there's not always parity from a broad perspective because the tech market moves so fast. So it is challenging but what Maria's organization does for us is allows us to find out how we're doing and how we resolve it internally. But it's not easy to be honest.

Alim Dhanji (15:16.944)

Yeah, for TD SYNNEX, it really started at the top. It's a big change management initiative first, and it has to start with the top. So Maria did a great job working with our executive leadership team, setting the stage, making sure that everyone understands what the mission here is and why it's important, how it's going to impact the business, and why it's good for our culture. So once the change management is set, then it's about raising the acumen across HR, our recruiters, and then ultimately, people managers. So they understand. There's a lot of misconception around what, you know, there's like a black box and decisions are made around compensation. And then there's some white smoke that comes out. We have to demystify that. And if you do that, then that transparency creates credibility and greater trust between our workforce and leadership. I think ultimately,

Maria Colacurcio (16:03.148)

Good job.

Alim Dhanji (16:12.801)

Yes, you want to get to closing the gap, but you got to do it in a way where that change is managed so that people don't feel that someone's getting more because of their gender or their race. It's because it is the right thing to do because it's fair.

Chad (16:26.185)

And it's also perfect because you're going to have to explain and defend if you get audited. So if you have that flushed out beforehand and you are transparent, then everything seems like, and I could be wrong, tell me if I'm wrong, seems like everything comes a little bit easier that way. Am I right?

Maria Colacurcio (16:41.442)

That's exactly right. And this era of transparency is not going anywhere. And I think what I'm hearing from customers like TD SYNNEX and Lumen Technologies is that in this era of transparency, it's not only the recruiter that has to articulate why people are paid what they're paid. You've got to use solutions that people managers, whether it's a promotion or a job transfer.

Ana White (16:44.685)

Yeah, totally.

Maria Colacurcio (17:07.222)

So there are states picking up some of the elements of the EU Directive, and one of those is around career progression. What that means is if you promote two people, you've got to explain to the person that wasn't promoted, why that person was picked and what you need to do to get on that same path. So companies really need to be able to articulate not just pay that's equitable and pay that's competitive with market, but also how is their pay consistent with their current policies? A lot of times companies–when we reflect back to them in the software, here's why you pay what you pay, your pay for tenure, your pay for performance–they don't like that. They actually want to shift their policies. And so what that means is you need strong recommendations and intelligence built in so that you can make the merit process a little more nimble. You can start to shift and augment people's pay in a way that's equitable, but also fair and competitive because all of these decisions now require explanation alongside the decision.

Joel (18:07.236)

In June of 2023, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, a story I'm sure you're all familiar with. We're a year on from that. Has it been a big deal? Is it much ado about nothing? What is that meant to the DEI progress?

Alim Dhanji (18:27.014)

So my point of view here is that companies that raised their commitments as a result of social justice after the tragic murder of George Floyd, some went a little bit too far because they were doing it for window dressing. And I believe that just as Maria started off the conversation, the pendulum swung a little bit too far and it's now correcting.

But those companies, and think TD SYNNEX is one and Lumen is definitely another, and there's other companies out there, long before social justice had a commitment towards inclusion and were already working on various strategies to make sure that there's equity, are continuing on. And I don't think that there is a day, unfortunately, where you're gonna check off and say, we're done with DEI.

Ana White (19:22.051)

Mm-mm.

Alim Dhanji (19:22.076)

This is going to take a long time for us to advance and we've got to keep at it. But I think the key differentiator here, which is why I really like what Syndio is doing, is it's creating transparency. And it's building trust. It's building a level of fairness that can be audited. It's not so subjective. And I think that's really important when people are looking at commitments and how it's impacting them in the workplace.

Ana White (19:53.365)

Yeah, I completely agree with what Alim said and I would just add my last few companies I've been at and especially now at Lumen Technologies, it's one of the reasons I joined. I knew our CEO, Kate Johnson, really put people first and DEI is a top priority for her and that has been steadfast and hasn't changed and I really, really appreciate that, and that's kind of what I was talking about in the beginning around workforce equity in terms of recruiting, hiring, retaining great employees. We do a lot of different things to ensure that we can diversify our employee population, really to match our customer set as well and really evolve kind of the demographics that you might typically find in a telecommunications company. So, and like Alim said, it's a total journey. Like you're never done, you're never there and there's always something to learn. No one knows it all in this space. So we're taking a real growth mindset.

And we're looking to kind of raise the bar sort of on what we do each day. But specific to hiring, we're very passionate about this. And we look at some diverse partnerships and really drive around our culture and our culture renovation. We're renovating our culture in a really exciting way. We also try to have the most inclusive job descriptions and advertisements. We work with over 200 diverse organizations and 900 universities on some really cool early in career talents and other things where we've won some fun awards there. And if you look at diverse representation for our early in career hiring, we tend to have around 50% female and just around that same color, same number for people of color in terms of what we bring in from universities. So we try and really look at bringing in the best possible talent there.

Chad (21:45.929)

So real quick, Ana, every CEO says that people are our greatest asset and for the most part it's BS. How did you know going into Lumen that this wasn't just BS? This was something that was true. So if you could help us and you just talked through a lot of partnerships, what kind of, and even some outcomes, what are some more of the outcomes that you're seeing that you're able to see on a daily basis that really inspire you to continue to do this work?

Ana White (22:01.496)

Yeah, it's great. So starting with when I joined, what I knew was Kate–I had worked peripherally with her at Microsoft when she was the President of the US–and I saw that she lived that saying. Like we talked earlier, there's some performative stuff happening where people say the right things, but they don't do the right things. To me, actions matter and impact matters, not just what people say. So I knew that in Kate and we had, we've hired a really pretty much almost fully new senior leadership team at the top.

And when we brought in leaders at the top, that was a key question for me: is understanding what they truly believe about diversity and inclusion, and would they come with this similar philosophy or not. So that's held sort of at the top of the house because I have seen companies to your point that don't truly live that.

But in terms of impact and what we've done, one thing I could say that's very, very recent is we added an eighth cultural behavior. We have seven behaviors; we just added an eight this year called, allyship. And I feel really strongly about allyship. Can be an ally to, anyone can be an ally to someone else. They need to start with a growth mindset and curiosity, and learn about the experiences of people that look and are different than them. So we've done a very intensive allyship at work training for all of our people managers as a requirement. And then our individual contributors can do that if they so choose to. And it's really teaching people to learn about different experiences and how to show up as an ally. There's many examples I can give on how to do that, but that's a key behavior for us and we're deeply investing in training.

Another example I can give you that's very real-time this week–we brought in all of our employee resource group or ERG leaders from around the world into Seattle and held an ERG summit with our senior leadership team so that we can learn across the nine ERGs that we have, how it's going for them, what's going well, what's not going well, what can we as a senior leadership team do to help them more, to raise the bar on how we do this at the company. And I think that shows it's not just words on a page or saying something, it's leaders leaning in to learn with curiosity and then forward action and take action in the right way to be a true ally.

Chad (24:30.631)

And Alim, you actually took this position. You've been in the position less than a year. You took this position because you felt like senior leadership was deeply committed to DEI. How did you see “deeply committed?” What were the actions? What were the outcomes? Not just words, what did you see was happening that you wanted to be a part of?

Alim Dhanji (24:55.974)

So it was the very first call I had with Patrick, who was the incoming CEO. I'm a LGBT–a member of the LGBT community–and I've got two kids. So sometimes when you've got kids, the natural assumption is that you've got a wife at home. And so I find myself coming out every day and it gets quite tiring. So I got on the phone with Patrick and the first thing he said to me was, before we talk about work, I'd love to talk about your kids and your husband.

Maria Colacurcio (25:05.97)

Thank you.

Chad (25:17.963)

Ha

Alim Dhanji (25:26.264)

And you know, just there and then there's a sigh of relief because I don't have to go through my narrative that I already have prepared. It's something very small, Chad, but it makes you feel so much more comfortable. And you know that you're not just being tolerated, you're almost being celebrated. And I think that makes a difference. You want to be yourself at work. And I knew right there and then that there's going to be a different relationship. And then every single person that I met within the company was very consistent about that. And I think these days, talent have choice about where to go. And so anything that gives competitive advantage is a good thing. And if you can be more inclusive, have a sense of belonging, then that is definitely going to give you an edge.

Joel (26:12.071)

I think more and more companies though, don't want to get on either side. More and more companies, we don't want Kid Rock shooting our beer and we don't want the other, like, we just want to do business. Was that a discussion internally at any of your organizations? Like should we stay the course that like you're talking about Alim or should we forget all these issues altogether? So when we don't get called out, don't, we just don't want to be political. Was there a discussion internally? And if there was, how did that go? And have you lost candidates because of, because of the position? And is that okay? I assume it is.

Alim Dhanji (26:44.442)

Yeah, looking at it candidly. Candidly, So not so much with TD SYNNEX, but I came from a big consumer brand previously. And that was in the news a lot because of some of our ambassadors were high profile entertainers and were controversial. So there were issues that required our employees to call the brand out and we had to make a choice. Ultimately, the organization made the right choice and severed relationships. But it took a little bit too long. And I think that what that entire experience showed to me is that our talents these days have a voice. with social media and different ways of showing up with activism, they are an important, a critical stakeholder just as much as an activist investor would be. So we've got to be conscious about the workplace that you're setting and the commitments you're making and then living by them. Otherwise, it's just window dressing and they will call you out on it.

Chad (27:57.203)

What I've heard from you, Alim, real quick, what I've heard from you a lot, Alim, is that you've been talking about business and business impact. And I think you have as well, Ana. And when it comes down to it, if you can demonstrate business impact, I mean, that's what you're there for in the first place, right? So, I mean, to me, this isn't a DEI issue, this is a talent issue. But it's you being able to blend that talent issue and obviously equity–trying to get to parity–issue into your, again, your landscape. Which is constantly moving. So talk about that a little bit.

Ana White (28:32.619)

Yeah, yeah, I love that comment, Chad. And to be honest, at Lumen Technologies, we're trying to transform an industry and it's a bit of a roller coaster. So we're having some real lowlights and some highlights. But I would say right now we're on a very positive momentum. And I would, of course, I'm a bit biased here, but I would credit our culture as a key driver for our business success. And part of our culture is what we're talking about.

It's about diversity, inclusion, and allyship and equity. But it's been a total roller coaster over the last few years at Lumen with really trying to move to cloudify telecommunications and be the backbone for AI. And we've had some very low lows. And right now, we are on a very positive momentum with our new release of Private Connectivity Fabric and some of the recent announcements we've made.

So we're really happy to see that. And we just had a town hall this week in Seattle. And Kate–I was very happy she said this. So it's not just me saying this on this podcast–but she said the real credit for our business transformation and our recent success and momentum is our culture. And so I feel strongly that if we continue this work as a company, we will see further business success. With our customers, we're here because of our customers. So we know that and everything we do is in light of our customers. But you have to treat your employees right. And the more they feel like they are truly included and have a feeling of inclusion and belonging, the better they'll perform and the better they'll treat their customers. It's just common sense in my opinion.

Chad (30:16.575)

So you're signaling from the top though too, because you take a look at the, the, the leadership slate. It's fit. It's about 50, 50. Usually we take a look at leadership in the C-suite and it's usually about 80-30, if you're lucky. Right? So you're at, you're at 50-50. And it sounds like from what you'd said before, when Kate came in, that was something that she really focused on because again, that signal is a very strong signal to the rest of the organization with regard to culture. Has that been something that's actually helped you and the rest of the team?

Ana White (30:47.095)

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up, Chad. Yeah, I feel really good about that. Now, Kate is a female CEO. She's an exceptional CEO and we have three female EVPs–myself, Ashley and Maxine. And it is a very diverse leadership team at the top. We've also done work to have diversity at the VP ranks.

So where I think we've done a really nice job is at the top. Now women in the company can see themselves getting to VP roles, to EVP roles, and ultimately, hopefully, like Maria, like Kate, can see themselves as a future CEO. We want to see more and more of that to cause for that inspiration, motivation, and we're really excited about that. We still have work to do, though, as you look across the company. We have work, like every company, we're not there.

Chad (31:17.087)

Yes. Mm.

Ana White (31:36.387)

But we're excited about kind of the top of the house. Yeah.

Chad (31:39.463)

Excellent. Excellent. So there is a workplace equity report. I'm dropping this on everybody before it even comes out. Syndio has a workplace equity trends report that's being released in late October and it finds HR practitioners remain committed to prioritizing workplace equity. Specifically 67 % of respondents believe their workplace equity programs will continue. Now I've got a question first and foremost to Maria and then secondarily to Alim and Ana.

Maria, is that something, I know from a market share standpoint, that's great, because that's two thirds of the market that actually feel like they want to prioritize this. Tell me a little bit about that and then I'm going to have a follow up question for the other two.

Maria Colacurcio (32:24.416)

Yeah, of course. So I think what's happening here is there's some very loud news that's making folks presume that that number is much, much lower. But I do believe because we're working with you over the course of what we do in our platform, we're analyzing 10 million employee records. So in the customers that I talk to on a daily basis, they are scared. There is fear. There's fear of the reverse activists coming in. There's fear of their goals being misconstrued as quotas.

Chad (32:29.515)

Mm.

Joel (32:33.543)

Hmm.

Maria Colacurcio (32:52.918)

And one of the things that software does is software is agnostic. So we can actually help companies with analytics to prove that they're not favoring or disfavoring any one particular group. They're simply being consistent with their policies and practices and making sure that they don't have disparities that are because of something like gender, race, or ethnicity, which again, that is unlawful.

So I believe when HR practitioners are answering these surveys. Absolutely. 67%. They are committed to these practices. They understand the connection to business outcome that you're hearing from Alim and Ana, but then they have to go commit and basically influence their leaders. So if they don't have a Kate at the top, if they don't have somebody at the top that believes in this, they have to go persuade and get that leadership team on board so that they can act on that belief and that persuasion that this does sort of create positive business outcomes. So I think that's the bit of the discrepancy that you're seeing and feeling in that number.

Chad (33:54.357)

So it's a lot stronger than what people are feeling in the market. So Alim, real quick, there's still a third of your peers, sir, that do not believe this is priority. What do you say to them?

Alim Dhanji (34:07.804)

I think that they're stuck in a cave. I'm sorry to be so blunt. I think the reality is, that in some ways equity has been politicized and the people that feel that it's wrong are saying that it's inequitable. The reality is you are trying to make it fair for people to advance by addressing their disadvantages.

And, and I agree with Maria, the best way to do that is by being transparent and being data led so that you can make the right decisions that are defensible. I also believe that it's a moment in time and there's sometimes this pressure, whether it's politics or, or, certain stakeholder groups that are, that are pushing a specific narrative. I think that this will correct itself and ultimately, it's about having the right culture so that you can have the right talent and have the right productivity and organization to win.

Chad (35:11.979)

How about you, Ana? What are you telling those peers?

Ana White (35:13.571)

Yeah, that was well said, Alim. I think it is about data. You can look at the McKinsey studies out there. There's also another organization called I4CP that does deep analytics and research around high performing companies. And a lot of that shows that the highest performing companies have the best cultures where employees feel included, valued, et cetera. So if you do things like pay equity, and workforce equity, your broader population is going to have that infusion of feeling of inclusion and belonging and a much higher engagement level, which will directly correlate to business results. There's many studies. It's actually quite objective if you start to look at it, both externally and internally. We try to cut our data every which way to learn each time. In the data, if you look at it, can show you that. But it's also the right thing to do. So stepping back from pure data, it's just the right thing to do.

Joel (36:14.325)

One for Alim and Ana. I don't know if you guys get sales calls very often, but you may have heard that AI is a really hot product these days. However, new products come with risks and we've heard a lot about AI being biased. You may have heard about Amazon's program pretty early on and just continuing that we're seeing legislation at the state level and federal level. What are you doing on a corporate level to make sure that if you're using AI, that you're not breaking the rules or the law.

What questions are you asking? Are you are using any kind of third party services to audit your activities? What are you doing in regards to AI and keeping yourself safe?

Ana White (36:51.499)

Yeah, yeah, I'm a huge fan of AI. AI is also really important to Lumen from a customer perspective, but kind of looking at ourselves internally, we have an AI committee that we look at the ground rules and all of that. We have a partnership with Microsoft. We're using Copilot. And so they've done a lot of this research around AI and bias and things like that.

We're relying a lot on Microsoft around this and Copilot has massively improved our productivity. The other thing I personally learned a lot about when I was at F5, the security company, is prompt education and bias that can occur in prompts. The other thing I'd say is engineers that develop and use AI, they also need to be diverse and understand kind of the biases that can creep in if there's not a proper level of diversity across the board. And so it starts with awareness, understanding, et cetera. But our partnership with Microsoft on Copilot has been really good to allow kind of that internal productivity for AI. And then we supplement beyond Copilot as well to kind of raise our bar on what we do around AI internally.

Chad (37:38.325)

Yes.

Alim Dhanji (37:59.644)

Yeah, and I can almost say ditto because we're also having fun with Copilot. And the committee really does work. And what we've tried to do with that committee is have a diverse group of stakeholders involved. And use cases from various functions and business lines are presented for consideration. And then when we would select that use case for AI, it doesn't matter how trivial it is. We assess all the implications, whether legal implications, ethical implications, et cetera, et cetera, so that we can understand consciously what we're signing into. But there's a broader change management point around AI because I read somewhere that something like 67 % of people who use AI in their work don't admit to using it because it gives away their superpower.

Chad (38:32.693)

Mm-hmm.

Alim Dhanji (38:52.086)

And so there's maybe a job security concern there. So what I'm doing with my team globally is we're going to have an HR or AI hackathon. And we're trying to demystify this. Whether you're creating a job profile, because I've not met an HR person who loves creating job profiles, but AI actually helps you do that rather quickly. And so whatever the use case is, we're going to have some fun with it for 48 hours and try to get people comfortable with AI.

Chad (39:22.463)

That's awesome.

Ana White (39:22.583)

Hey, I might copy you on that one. I like the hackathon idea, that's cool.

Alim Dhanji (39:26.856)

That's great.

Maria Colacurcio (39:27.33)

I'll just offer a quick anecdote. I moderated a panel on Tuesday at an event put on by Cadence called Femme.ai and the panel was with investors. And we got this great question at the end on sort of where do you see the biggest opportunities for AI to reduce human bias? And one of the investors, she was a growth stage investor and she shared that they have a bot that listens to calls between the partners, the VC partners, and identifies when they're speaking about founders. So, it listens in when the VCs are sort of discussing a potential founder entrepreneur and deciding whether to invest. And the bot actually points out potential bias. And she shared that that was really helpful because as people are up and coming in the organization, it's often scary to point out to a partner that you're kind of applying some sort of proximity bias or cultural bias, or they look, feel like me, went to the same school as me, bias. But when it's a bot just sort of pointing it out, as a neutral third party, it makes it a little bit easier to deliver that message. I had never heard that example before, and I thought it was a pretty solid example of where we can be implementing some of these technologies in a way that's productive.

Chad (40:36.265)

Yeah, very good. Very nice. Very nice. Last but not least, Ana, you teased a story earlier and we're not going to let you out of that one. So we're going to end up on Ana's story. So...

Ana White (40:42.307)

Yeah. Cool. Great.

Joel (40:42.885)

No teasing. No teasing.

Ana White (40:47.651)

Okay, cool. Thank you. Thanks, Chad. I love the data, but I thought data and stories is kind of fun. So when I think about Pay Equity, Kate, the CEO, and I have been traveling a lot around the US, and recently India and Singapore. And on one of our trips, I believe it was in Texas, it was one of the states recently, after the town hall that we did with a Q&A. One of our employees came up to me and it was a really meaningful moment, I would say, in my career because stories stick, in my opinion. He came up to me and said he lived there for quite some time. He'd been an employee for quite some time. He had recently received a pay equity adjustment and the impact to his family was quite substantial. And his eyes started watering and we took a picture together and I got his permission to share it with one person on my team. And he also said not only the pay equity adjustment just recently, but also the shift to allow work from anywhere, not to have to be located in one specific spot and be in the office. So, we have moved to, can work from anywhere. And that gave his family, him and his family, a whole other level of freedom where he now spends so much more dedicated, high quality time with his family. And with that combination pay equity adjustment, he was, he said he felt so seen, heard and appreciated by the company. And to me, those are the moments that matter.

Chad (42:14.485)

Well, the moments of the matter and they, the people that will stay, the loyalty that happens, I mean, that's just a beautiful thing. That's awesome. Great story. Thanks, Ana.

Joel (42:22.759)

What a feel-good moment to end a Chad and Cheese episode. That is Ana, Alim and Maria. Guys, we'll go reverse order this time. Ana, for our listeners who want to connect with you or learn more about the organization, where do you send them?

Ana White (42:37.603)

My LinkedIn, so Ana and last name is White. Please reach out to me. That would be great. Thank you.

Joel (42:43.355)

Lucky enough, Alim, where do they go?

Alim Dhanji (42:46.788)

If you can find me on TikTok, you have exceptional skills. Otherwise, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me.

Chad (42:53.237)

I'll be looking on TikTok. I'll be looking.

Joel (42:54.533)

Understood and Maria, about you, and where can they learn more about Syndio?

Maria Colacurcio (42:59.648)

Yeah, same. So my LinkedIn is just Colacurcio and then Syndio’s is synd.io. So connect in either place and we'd be happy to hear from anyone.

Chad (43:09.461)

Beautiful.

Joel (43:09.743)

Love it. Thanks for joining us everyone. Chad, that is another one in the can. We out.

Chad (43:14.995)

We out.