Editor’s Note — February 10, 2022: See here for the latest information on Trailblazer Ranch.
Quick Take: Fortune and Great Place to Work named Salesforce one of the World’s Best Workplaces for the fifth consecutive year. This recognition results from being recognized on more than 20 Great Place to Work lists across the globe.
A great culture and a great workplace don’t simply happen by accident. It’s a result of us being intentional and leading with our values of trust, customer success, innovation, and equality in all that we do. As a customer-oriented company, we know that we can only take care of our customers if we first take care of ourselves. Over the past year, we’ve had to transform our thinking around the employee experience and reimagine the way we work to ensure we’re enabling a more connected, healthy, innovative, and productive workplace. This is why our recent World’s Best Workplaces recognition is so special. It shows that we’ve been able to continue fostering a sense of community and culture despite being in a digital-first environment.
How and where we work has dramatically changed and we’re embracing this with our Success from Anywhere mindset, which is allowing us to deepen our connections with one another and find more balance between work and home — ultimately leading to increased innovation and better business outcomes. Not only are we transforming the way we operate but we are empowering our employees to do their best work — from home, the office, and anywhere in between. Here are a few ways we’ve stepped up to support, innovate, and evolve the employee experience at Salesforce over the past year.
Supporting our employees in need
We’ve been deeply committed to providing support to our employees, customers, partners, and communities as the pandemic continues to have a devastating impact across the globe. To date, Salesforce has delivered over 60M items of PPE, protected 200M people through contract tracing, and are on track to support 2B vaccine doses to 190 countries by the end of 2021.
A few months ago, Salesforce sprung into action to support our nearly 4,000 employees in India. We announced a $1.1 million donation to United Way of Hyderabad, Concern India Foundation, Rise Against Hunger India, and Youth for Seva to support the COVID-19 response across the country. Additionally, we created a global employee giving and matching campaign. To date, the campaign has generated more than $1 million, including matching by Salesforce. These corporate and employee donations have impacted the lives of more than 200,000 people across India.
We’re flexing forward
The number one thing we’ve heard from employees over the past year is that flexibility is important to them. So, we’ve developed three different ways of working — Office-Flexible, Home-Based, and Office-Based. Most employees will come into the office when it works for them and for their teams and customers — whether that’s 1 day a month, 2 to 3 days per week, or somewhere in between. By providing employees with the flexibility to be successful from anywhere, we’ve been able to increase individual productivity by 16%, prioritize wellness, and drive new levels of collaboration.
Central to this approach are our Flex Team Agreements. At a company, function, and team level, they help define what’s most important in how and where we show up, work, stay connected, and nurture our culture. Each agreement can be customized to address each team’s unique needs, and help outline how they behave and operate — keeping them connected, even from afar.
Leveraging data to safely reopen
In order to stay close to our workforce and understand their changing needs, we introduced wellbeing surveys, which have helped us make data-driven decisions to better support our employees in this new environment. The data has guided our re-opening strategy and has shown us that 80% of employees want to maintain a connection to a physical space. We’ve worked hard to transform our offices into more community spaces that foster collaboration and innovation.
With Work.com and our safety protocols, we’ve already opened more than 60 offices across Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States, each using our Success from Anywhere office reopening model. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy, given the differences from city to city. Our holistic plan allows us to be nimble and flexible while maintaining the safest approach possible.
Finding new ways to connect with our culture
While we fully recognize and embrace that we’re in a digital-first world, we know that a majority of our employees still want to have the ability to connect in person. That’s why we’ve decided to create the ultimate expression of the Salesforce culture — the Trailblazer Ranch. It will be a sustainable gathering place where all stakeholders can come together to connect, learn, innovate, get inspired, have fun, and give back. For us, this is the next evolution of our culture.
We’re also still prioritizing the fun in all that we do. Whether it’s our talent show “Salesforce Has Talent” or our week-long, reimagined bring-your-kid-to-work day in which 4,000 children participated in, “Salesforce Adventurers Club,” we’ve worked hard to find creative ways to bring people together virtually. At Salesforce, our people are our biggest asset and we will continue to invest in benefits and programs to keep our employees and their families happy and healthy.
As we continue to move forward in this digital-first, Success From Anywhere world, we remain committed to actively listening to our employees and tailoring our approach to best fit their experiences. This transformative shift in the workplace has given us an opportunity to create an even better workplace that is more connected, innovative, and productive.
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