How the pandemic fueled remote work boom can boost diversity & inclusion

Silvina Moschini - TransparentBusiness Co-Founder & President joins Yahoo Finance On The Move panel to break down why its important for companies to hire and invest in a diverse workplace as well as discuss how remote work is booming amid the pandemic.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: A lot of us are working from home right now, men and women. And we want to focus on what the pandemic and opportunities are presenting for women, especially those who are working from home. One of the best people to discuss that is Silvina Moschini, TransparentBusiness Co-Founder and President joining us from Miami, Florida.

Good to have you here, and congratulations. Your remote work platform is about to reach $1 billion valuation. What's driving this success? Is it solely women taking on more jobs and working from home? Tell us about this.

SILVINA MOSCHINI: No, hopefully there will be more women taking on remote jobs, Adam. But the reality is that the pandemic created like a big bang explosion on remote work technologies. And we were already working on this for many, many years to take on this opportunity and make the world work remotely.

JULIE HYMAN: Silvina, it's Julie here. Thank you for joining us. So as we look at this remote work, this big shift we have seen, you guys have been growing, right? And in your latest fundraising round, it seems you did not go the traditional route. Explain to us what you did and why you did it that way.

SILVINA MOSCHINI: Indeed, Julie. The reality is that VCs do not invest at large in women founders or founders of color. So we didn't have quite the chance there. Like only 2.2 of the VC money goes to technology companies founded by women. So we decided to take our offer to the public doing a Regulation D raise to raise money from private individuals in the US from our great investors and the response was amazing.

We were able to raise money successfully and then build those [INAUDIBLE] very strong networks of advocates and ambassadors that are co-building with us and taking this inclusive [? across ?] democratizing access to money make us all so very successful in our ability to expand globally. So I guess that we skirted the rules. We didn't break it. We followed the rules, but we did it with a female [? twitch, ?] who will be more creative, and inclusive, and also democratizing access to investment opportunity for all.

INES FERRE: Silvina, I'm going off of that point. What needs to change? Do you have any thoughts on that in order for VC funding to go more towards minority and women-owned and run businesses?

SILVINA MOSCHINI: Well, Ines, I said they need to change their mindset. Like we women receive more university degrees, advanced degrees. When we create diverse teams, the return on investment on profits are 28% better, but yet the money is not there. They actually need to deliver on their promise to put their money where their mouth is. They are talking a lot, but they're actually not investing much in female founders.

ADAM SHAPIRO: I'm curious on a broader vision of what it's going to look like post-pandemic. We learned from Microsoft, for instance, that they're going to allow their workforce to at least work 50% of the work week from home as much as 100%. So with your business and these issues that we're discussing, what do you envision happening after the pandemic, because it won't just be Microsoft that has remote work, will it?

SILVINA MOSCHINI: It won't be Microsoft. Actually, really recently both Google, and Dropbox, and companies like Spotify announced that it will go permanently with remote work or blended teams. The reality is that the world saw that these type of jobs, the remote work, was possible. It was more efficient, more productive, more inclusive because it allows for women to remain in the workforce.

And Adam, one thing that it's important to know is that 51% of women drop out of the workforce because of lack of flexibility. And we're living in the digital age, so this is absurd. It cannot happen. They won't reach C-level position if they drop out of the workforce.

So we believe that the next immediate future of work will be blended models where some people will go sometimes to the office, many more people will be working from home, and companies will be able to hire remote talent. So countries, and states, and cities where they don't have opportunities will be able to export their talent in the cloud. And this will create a much more efficient and inclusive work-- a world of work for everyone.

JULIE HYMAN: At the same time, Silvina, many women who are working at home right now are also experiencing a lot of challenges, right, particularly if the kids are at home. So when you are developing software to monitor and manage workers at home, how do you sort of allow for that flexibility without being-- allowing employers to be sort of overly impose into their workers' lives?

SILVINA MOSCHINI: Julie, there are two things. One, women need to find partners that support them in their housework, because housework and taking care of the children is never only a women responsibility. But when it comes to privacy, we do believe that technology allows for more privacy than the privacy that we have when we go to an office.

In our case, our technology is user-activated and user-control. So the user use it to report their work in-- and a spirit to collaborate and digitize their workflow so they can work together, get metrics, and also very important, avoid burnout. Because when working from home, we have many challenges.

One thing is far from what many employers think that people work less, we end up working a lot more. So I think that having technology that is user-activated and user-control, as we are doing now, I'm sharing my image, but I choose to do it with the objective of collaboration, is extremely important and is not invasive. Some other players try to overdo it and control everything, and this is very disrespectful for workers.