Shadiah Sigala is the co-founder and Head of People at HoneyBook, a vendor management platform for event professionals. As the founder of a growing business that focuses on freelance professionals and the mother of two small children, Shadiah is especially attuned to the issues facing parents in the workforce. She is hosting our event tomorrow at the HoneyBook office and is a panelist in our #breakingbias conversation.
Shadiah, in your role as Head of People at HoneyBook you have put a lot of effort into creating a particular type of work environment and culture. Can you please tell me what makes working at HoneyBook different, what was the intention behind creating this culture, and how to do maintain that standard?
At HoneyBook, we’ve been deliberate about crafting a values-driven company from the get-go. Whereas most companies wait a few years to think about their culture (putting product and profit ahead), we were intentional about our norms and values from our first year. We are guided by five core values, and we live them out in everything we do. It’s no secret that startups are nothing if not ambiguous. But when you have a set of guiding principles, it makes even the most difficult of situations and decisions a little more navigable. Employees truly respect and enjoy that aspect of our company and it’s made us a very desirable place to work for.
HoneyBook recently did a study about the gender pay gap in the freelance workforce that had fascinating results. People may assume that because freelancing is outside of the corporate pay pricing model and people set their own rates it would more equitable–was that the outcome of the study?
Actually, we found that in the creative freelance economy, women are earning 32% less than men in the same professions. That’s a steeper gap than that found in the corporate sector. Interestingly, a majority of respondents in our study didn’t think there was a gender pay gap. That’s incongruent with the data we uncovered, showcasing even more of a problem in the perception of the gender pay gap. Of those who thought there was a gender pay gap, most said it was due to negotiating power and wage secrecy. This suggests that female creatives have the potential to close the gender pay gap simply by negotiating and charging more for their services, in addition to establishing a dialogue around what they’re making in their respective industries.
As a mother yourself, now out on maternity leave with your second child, do you feel that there is a bias against working parents? Is this something you have experienced personally? How do you combat the motherhood penalty in your own business?
After becoming a mother, I felt compelled to institute a generous paid family leave policy (which extends beyond only parenthood) at HoneyBook. It took me, as a co-founder, to experience parenthood in order to empathize and develop a progressive policy. But I know scores of companies in this “land of plenty” that is Silicon Valley that simply do not care enough to develop a maternity leave program, let alone family leave. At HoneyBook, one of our core values is We Are Family, and we mean that down to our policies 🙂
Thank you Shadiah for taking time away from your new baby to host our event and take part in the panel on #breakingbias. See you in SF tomorrow!