The Talent Hidden in Plain Sight | Cia Kouparitsas, CEO at Greenbeam

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to FinTech's DEI Discussions podcast series. We are here today to celebrate the wins, raise awareness of the challenges, and walk the talk for inclusive change across the entire financial technology industry. This podcast is part of our, uh, Workplace Future Ready series. And today we are joined by Siya Kuper Ritsas, CEO of Greenbeam. She is here to share how she walks the talk for inclusion in our sector and more importantly, what more she wants done. Sia, welcome.

Speaker A: Thank you, Nadia. It's so nice to be here.

Speaker B: It's great to have you here in our studio to open things up. Can you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background?

Speaker A: Thank you. Nadia. Yes, as you said, my name is Sia. I'm the CEO of Greenbeam. I have been working in the tech sector as a proud woman in tech for more than 20 years. The past six of those have been with Greenbeam. And, and I feel very passionately not only about the importance of, you know, being a woman who is visible in tech and helping other women rise up in that regard as well, but also of being a champion for diversity, equity and inclusion. Because I think in the tech sector there is a real problem with diversity and especially gender equity. Um, and I am very committed to doing whatever I can to help people rise above those, um, those challenges.

Speaker B: And I love what you do. Please tell the audience a bit more about Greenbeam and exactly what the mission is.

Speaker A: Beautiful. So Greenbeam's mission is that human capability is never underestimated. And I suppose that's taken on new significance in recent years with the advent and onset of AI and digital transformation. Because for the first time in a long time, how the workforce capability conversation is happening is really at the board level. It's across the entire senior leadership team, not just in the HR function. And I think it's more important than ever that we really understand what humans are capable of delivering when it comes to what technology can do and what people can do. Um, we had social origin impacts. So our company was founded around eight years ago, initially with the vision of solving underemployment, which is this idea that someone may be working, but not in a job that meets their potential. And we see underemployment everywhere in society and in most workplaces, but most commonly it's in those, um, groups that may not have followed a traditional K12 education path. Um, we were veteran founded, uh, we did a lot of work in Australia with indigenous communities, with neurodiverse individuals, people with a disability, and then moved into women in tech. And through that process. We wanted to be able to find a way to break down some of the barriers that traditionally restricted people from finding meaningful employment. So we created quite an innovative technology solution that predicts someone's ability to learn skills. So even if they haven't had the opportunity to try a role or a job before, were able to give some pretty compelling data that suggests whether they would excel at that or need extra support. And that's a combination of cognitive aptitude and psychometric assessments to basically predict how easy you will find it to learn different things and whether you'll enjoy practising those in different roles. And uh, that was a really effective model, I think, of everyone who stepped into new roles based off those assessments, 94% of people stayed in those roles for longer than 12 months. So we knew it was obviously a really great predictor of performance. And off the back of that we started to build out more smarts into the technology. And a key part of that was understanding, well, what other capabilities do you have, perhaps from life experience or from non traditional work experience that might carry across to the corporate sector? How do we translate that into a common language for people? And that's essentially how Greenbeam grew and grew and grew. Um, started off obviously trying to place people into employment, but now we've got entire organisations managing their workforce um, off this compelling human capability data.

Speaker B: I find this all so fascinating. And you know, right now I think everyone's talking about transferable skills, but they really need everything that you just said there because individuals are not that well versed at uh, saying what their transferable skill actually is and nor are the people who are hiring or promoting at identifying that transferable skill. So I just think there's this gap that you are just amazingly, uh, focusing on and bridging at the moment. On top of that, this is um, a conversation I have quite a lot where people think that everything that you've said can be put in the nice to have bracket when really this is a have to have, have to have for the individuals. Like how can people be, as you say, underemployed in employment but just nowhere near reaching their full potential and what the knock on effect is for that, but also for businesses out there. Imagine 10 people underemployed. Imagine 100. Now imagine a thousand. What that's doing to an entire industry.

Speaker A: Yes, well, and an entire organization. I think one of the most compelling findings has been organizations who apply this, this skills based model of thinking across their workforce and they uncover so much untapped potential and unknown or Invisible capability that they didn't know was there. And I think that's the thing. You know, on one hand it's really important to be thinking and skills to bring different talent into the organization because we all know the benefits that come with that. And it's important to not only do the right thing, but there's incredible business benefits from hiring people from diverse backgrounds. But within an organization, most organizations have no idea as to the full breadth of skill and capability they have in their people. They're going on those outdated proxies. So things like what does their resume or CV say that they've done? What job title are they in today? None of that shows you what other hidden skills might be there or potential for people to lift. And I think in this economic climate where we're all trying to do more with less, it is so important not only for the individual but you're giving them the opportunity to rise and to step up into new challenges. But for organizations to ensure that they are utilizing as much of their workforce in the best possible way.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And just that point about how the vibe is all about being lean right now, you know, utilizing that workforce in the most efficient way possible. But actually in that drive for efficiency I often see in hiring and who gets promoted, who's recently been made redundant, how inefficient that can be. From your point of view, what do employers need to be considering to have their workplace ready for tomorrow?

Speaker A: That's an excellent question. I think the thing most organizations are missing m is the level of robust people data to be making the decisions they need to make about their workforce. So with the organizations I typically talk to, they are very limited on the actual knowledge and depth of information they have about their people's capability. So as I mentioned there might be proxies what jobs are uh, they currently in, what do we think they need to do for that job. But unless you've actively defined what are the capabilities that our organisation needs and what are the capabilities that our people have, you're not getting that depth of well where are the gaps, where are the risks, where are the opportunities? So for leaders who are getting ready for. You said tomorrow, but honestly today it's here with us now. Uh, the first thing I recommend is defining what good looks like and we talk about a capability framework as a way to do that. So a universal um, definition of all of the skills that you require within your organization but also the level of proficiency, not just beginner, intermediate and advanced because that still too broad to be making life changing workforce Decisions on. We typically use a scale of 5 or 7, depending on the capability framework that you want to work with. But really granular, what are the tasks and the outcomes that we expect our people to be able to do across every job within our team? That's the first step. The second step is now let's actually map the capabilities of our people. And of course, that's what Greenbean does. Uh, we have a tool that allows you to do that rapidly and at scale. We can use AI to be able to do that and infer it from things like resumes and LinkedIn. But we always then want the individual and their manager to be involved in that process. Because at the end of the day, you can't have AI making decisions about people. It can give you efficiencies in terms of how you're pulling this data together, but you want your people to verify, yes, I have that skill. And here's five more you didn't know about. And that then gives you that really rich, robust view of these are the skills, skills we need. This is the proven, verified data of the skills that we have. We can see where our gaps are. We know where we need to lift and support our people or hire new people in, or make really important workforce decisions.

Speaker B: In your research, are there any, uh, new skills that seem to be trending at the moment?

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's interesting. Obviously there's more and more tech skills and digital skills that are always required in the workforce as a result of, you know, people needing to use technology more. But the most in demand skills are those human skills. So that's what's really interesting about what AI has done. It's coming in and it's taking a lot of those lower level, repeatable tasks out of jobs. But what it's doing is it's actually elevating the need for people to be supervising the output of the AI, bringing in things like creativity, judgment, all of those really rich, dynamic human capabilities that we absolutely need. And I think the other misconception a lot of the time is that AI will take over, ah, complete job, families. You know, we often hear about the impact on software engineering or data analytics. It does not remove the need for those capabilities within an organization. All it will do is elevate the people who are in those roles, needing to build a higher level of skill to be able to confidently direct, analyze, interpret the output of the AI, to be able to make those proper human decisions.

Speaker B: It's so interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, we've got headlines that Sensationalize everything right, that get people really worried about the future. But it's so encouraging to hear when you talk about judgment, when you talk about empathy and those human skill sets to, to actually assess those outputs so they fit for purpose, to question those outputs. How can leaders best prepare themselves, would you say?

Speaker A: Look, I always say data is your best friend. You need to have as much data as you possibly can about what you, you need, what you have and make your decisions based off that. I ah, do think financial services is interesting because we have so much financial information within our organizations that we know exactly how to make business decisions because, you know, there's, there's databases and so much analysis. And we feel absolutely confident if we're making a business decision around money. But when it comes to our people, we don't have that same robust view of data. So I think absolutely making sure that your systems are set up to have the data that you need to make those decisions. Decisions. I think the other really interesting trend I'm finding, whether it's hiring someone or perhaps doing leadership and succession planning, is the reliance on the human capability. So rather than ensuring someone has every single skill required for a specific role, the importance of culture, fit and mindset and being able to lift and rise and be agile in those kinds of environments. And I think psychometrics are having a real resurgence in this way because you know, we can define the capability and do these people have these skills, have they built this experience? But the psychometrics are going to give you a really good indication into perhaps some of those evolving capabilities and really important mindset views that we need our people to be moving with on a daily basis.

Speaker B: And a leader that's listening to this now and they're thinking, wow, I really need to hold on to that human touch. What advice would you give to them?

Speaker A: I think the most important thing is remember that your people are your organization. I think everyone knows that the workforce is often the biggest investment and the greatest asset. But we don't always treat people like that. I mentioned AI before. I think AI is incredible. It is accelerating our ability to move quickly and to scale production. My biggest piece of advice with AI would be never let the AI make decisions. Uh, we often see it being used, you know, in high volume recruitment processes. You want to make sure you're understanding how that is being used because at the end of the day people are ah, multidimensional, they are holistic, they have so much that they can bring and should not be locked out based off a decision from a piece of technology. And it's up to us as leaders to really make sure that we are always ensuring that, yes, while we use technology and we take advantage of AI, that our people are our greatest asset and that being treated as such.

Speaker B: And I just think the way you describe that is exactly what I work towards. The fact that we are also different, we are going to think differently and that should be celebrated. I love how that that is ultimately the core of everything that you're saying. Like, yes, the world is changing quickly and we need to keep up with it, but we've got to make sure that that's within all the decisions that are being made. So anyone listening to this podcast now and they're thinking, I want to help drive that inclusion, that diversity of thought within my business, what advice would you give to them?

Speaker A: I think the best thing organizations can do is to start to think from a skill based perspective because skills are, uh, looking at the ability of people. And I mentioned before, you know, defining what good light looks like, understanding the capability across your people and then seeing what rises to the top is the most valuable pursuit of perspective you will get. There is one organization as an example that did this exercise with us and there was so much talent that they didn't know existed that they didn't have to necessarily go to market for every role. They could lift some of these people up and then hire below them. So you're giving your people the opportunity first to kind of rise and it actually resulted in them getting some pretty impressive outputs like their leadership team as a result of a few decisions reached a 50, 50% gender equity for the first, first time. And it was not because they were inherently trying to make the wrong decision by their people before. They just didn't have the data and the visibility to see that these people actually do fit the profile and they do have the skills. They've just been looking at those people in that role and not having the sense of the depth behind them or what they've done before. And you know, that's fine, we're human. Until you get that information, you can't possibly be making decisions with the full view. So, you know, I said it a million times before, but I think you need to give yourself the data on your people to make the right decisions for the benefit of the business, but also for your people.

Speaker B: I love everything you're doing at Greenbeam. Just hearing that, like knowing that, you know, you're helping companies identify those skills, promote people in the best possible way and whilst doing it, you're addressing deficits in our industry, addressing gender imbalances, addressing all things forms of imbalances. It's just such an amazing mission that you're on. So thank you for talking us through how you do that and the work that we can all be doing to support it. So thank you for joining us on FinTech's DEI discussions. Let's listen, let's learn, let's walk the talk.