Getting Pay Equity Right

Fairness is a major factor that tends to color how employees view the workplace. If a happy, engaged employee learns that another employee doing the same job is getting 15% more than he or she is getting, all the other things that made the job seem great turn to ash.

Employers may or may not even notice the ill effects when employees feel that they are being treated unfairly. The consequences can range from catastrophically expensive lawsuits, causing public relations nightmares, generating retention/hiring problems, or more likely, all three.

However, there are often instances of unfair treatment, especially unfair compensation that are often not detected by employers, such as diminished engagement, reduced commitment to work, and ultimately, costly turnover. This tends to occur more frequently with female employees.

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The DeanBeat: Why the smart kids are moving into blockchain games

We dove deeper into blockchain, cryptocurrency, and games at our GamesBeat Summit 2019 in Los Angeles. We had a panel on it last year, but the game industry leaders that are diving into blockchain games have more credibility now.

The skeptics persist, as cryptocurrency scams and fraud are still plentiful. There’s a Gold Rush mentality that is aptly scaring off a lot of game developers from diving into the space. Some have looked at games like CryptoKitties and concluded that blockchain games are still too primitive.

But the game veterans who have studied this emerging market are excited about it. What’s different now is that more game company leaders who have been successful in previous generations are exploring blockchain.

Just this week, Microsoft threw a lot of its cloud computing weight behind blockchain. Ubisoft is also active in blockchain games, but we weren’t able to secure a speaker from them.

Some of the believers think that blockchain will be key to gaming dreams such as Ready Player One, the Metaverse, The Matrix, or Snow Crash. Meanwhile, big game companies like Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, and Take-Two Interactive are on the sidelines.

Our speakers included Kevin Chou, CEO of Forte and former CEO of Kabam, interviewed by Mike Vorhaus. We also had a panel on blockchain games moderated by Concept Art House CEO and Fifth Era partner James Zhang; and I moderated a closing session with Brock Pierce, chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation and founder and funder of numerous cryptocurrency startups.

Zhang’s panel included Arthur Madrid, Board Member of Animoca Brands, Roy Liu, Head of Business Development at the Tron Foundation, Kevin Chou, CEO of Forte Labs, and Miko Matsumura, General Partner at Gumi Ventures & Co-Founder of Evercoin Exchange. The panelists alone have publicly announced that they plan to invest more than $230 million in blockchain games.

I’ll go over the highlights of what each person said, but I’ve also included the videos of what they talked about. I also interviewed Miko Matsumura separately on camera. And Randy Saaf, CEO of Lucid Sight, also spoke in one of our lightning rounds. I’d say that’s a pretty good representation of the crypto folks across the board at our summit.

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Drones are a 'real threat,' but U.S. doesn't know how many are out there

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security is beefing up its anti-drone efforts away from the country's borders as it takes aim at potential national security threats.

The dangers posed by explosives-laden drones were underscored last year by an assassination attempt targeting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as he made a speech. The FBI has also warned that it expects terrorist groups to attempt to use drones to carry out attacks on American soil.

"In the wrong hands, they're a real threat," said Tim Bennett, who oversees counter-drone technologies at the DHS.

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WhiteFox Wins First Place in AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards

WhiteFox is humbled to announce we’ve won two 1st place AUVSI XCELLENCE awards in Tech Innovation: DroneFox Mobile for UAS Mitigation & Security, and WISDM for Innovation. The winners were announced yesterday at AUVSI XPONENTIAL in Chicago, the largest most comprehensive trade show for unmanned and autonomous systems. Our flagship counter-drone product, DroneFox Mobile, is an intelligent RF system that detects, identifies, and mitigates safely and selectively. WISDM is a Secure Remote ID product that can physically be attached to a drone or input directly into drones’ software. Thank you AUVSI for your recognition—we’re honored to receive both awards at such an important event in the industry.

To learn more about the AUVSI XCELLENCE awards visit https://bit.ly/2OCGmsW 

Slack, Match Lead Firms Pledging to Find and Close Gender Pay Gaps

Analyzing employee pay data is hard and expensive, but a Seattle data firm is pushing companies to hew to a common standard 

Are women paid the same as men in your office? How about people of color compared with white people? If you work in the U.S., there’s a good chance you don’t know—and neither, to be honest, does your employer.

The only companies legally required to analyze their payroll to assess whether or how they may be contributing to racial or gender inequalities in pay are government contractors.  A few others do it anyway, whether out of some altruistic belief in fairness or in response to public pressure, but the vast majority of U.S. companies don’t bother.

To properly assess the sprawling salary data of thousands of employees gets expensive. Large businesses will usually hire an outside consultancy to do it for them, and even then, pay gap reports can take months to produce.

“Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a 150-page report plopped on their desk that took six months to produce. That’s nuts,” says Maria Colacurcio, CEO of theSeattle analytics company Syndio. “This is something that could be automated so quickly.”

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