At Salesforce, we believe business is a powerful platform for social change and the equal value of every human life. Our higher purpose is to drive Equality for all — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, age, religion, ability status, or sexual orientation.
We seek to create workplaces that reflect the diverse communities we serve and a culture where everyone feels valued, heard and included. We are honored to be recognized by Fortune as one of the best workplaces for diversity, but acknowledge there’s more work ahead. As we wrap 2018, we want to reflect on our journey, measure our progress, and look forward at what’s to come.
Honoring Transparency
We publish our diversity numbers annually on our Equality website to promote transparency and hold ourselves accountable. In March, we also published our 2017 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s EEO-1 results, which show race, ethnicity and gender data by job category. We plan to update that report annually.
Today, we’re updating our diversity numbers for 2018. We’ve seen real progress in some areas, and less in others. It’s clear there is still work to be done.
Here are some highlights:
- Women: Women make up 31.6% of our workforce, up from 30.9% last year, adding 4,000 women employees, and outpacing Salesforce’s growth. Within leadership, women make up 22.3% of our VP+ population — up 1.4% from last year.
- Underrepresented Minorities: Underrepresented minorities (URM) make up 10.1% of our workforce, up from 9.45%, adding over 400 URM employees. The growth of underrepresented minorities outpaces Salesforce’s growth.
- New Hires: As we look at our future workforce, 47% of Futureforce new hires in the U.S. were women or Underrepresented Minorities — up from 43% last year.
- Board of Directors: There are three women and three Underrepresented Minorities on our 13-person board of directors.
Steps We Are Taking
Adopting Inclusive Business Practices
At Salesforce, we want to ensure that our hiring processes are fair, equitable, and standardized across our company. We also are committed to educating our managers on how to create inclusive teams as well as fair development and promotion paths. Using our own guided learning platform — Trailhead — we’ve created a range of Equality enablement modules including Inclusive Hiring and Inclusive Leadership to empower hiring and people managers.
Building the Diverse Workforce of the Future
Equal access to a quality education and opportunities in tech is core to our Equality journey — we believe it is our responsibility to set up the next generation workforce for success. We do this by engaging with our local communities by adopting schools, volunteering in classrooms, promoting STEM education, and creating job training programs.
This year, Salesforce.org, the philanthropic arm of Salesforce, announced $15.5 million in grants to the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) — bringing the total investment in the districts to more than $50 million. As a result of Salesforce.org’s partnership with SFUSD, enrollment in computer science has increased by 2,500 percent and enrollment in advanced placement (AP) computer science has tripled over the past three years. Equality starts with education, and we believe everyone should have equal access and opportunity.
Workforce development is also core to building more pathways into Tech. We are one of the founding partners of Year Up and host the largest cohort in the Bay Area. Year Up gives diverse youth opportunities by developing their skills, gaining experience, and offering support. This year, we also introduced our newest workforce development program, called the Pathfinder Training Program, to address the skills gap by providing those from diverse backgrounds –– whether they be young adults, veterans, or adults in career transition –– with the technical skills and business acumen needed for careers in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Elevating Underrepresented Voices
In November, we hosted our first-ever Racial Equality Summit, Representation Matters, to inspire, empower, and elevate the tech industry’s most underrepresented talent. 700 Black, Latinx, and Native attendees joined us along with their allies and 126K online viewers to celebrate the successes of these communities and have authentic conversations about Race.
We know that there is undeniable power in representation — this event featured luminary trailblazers across media, the C-suite, venture capitalism, and civil rights. All speakers and vendors were people of color. This was one step toward putting conversations about racial equality at the forefront of our industry and supporting Underrepresented Minorities in tech. Stay tuned for the next one in 2019. Missed it? Watch our Representation Matters highlights.
Building a Culture of Allies and Empowering our Employee Resource Groups
At Salesforce, we believe that everyone has a role in our path to equality — allyship. An ally is someone who stands up and supports a group or individual with which they don’t personally identify. When we build a community of allies we empower all of our employees to be Equality champions.
In that spirit, we launched our allyship practices that encouraged our allies to “ask, listen, show up and speak up.” This has helped increased our employee resource group participation to 1 in 2 employees, and continues to grow.
Reflecting on 2018, we’ve faced unprecedented threats to Equality across the world, but we’ve also seen so many people rising above the hate, creating new understanding and coming together drive inclusion forward. It’s inspiring and fuels us to continue to work tirelessly to advance Equality for All.
As we look towards 2019, we will continue our commitment to driving meaningful change within and beyond our four walls. We’re working together with our stakeholders to build a workplace that reflects society and drive positive change in the world.
Together, we will continue to pave the path forward to Equality for All. To learn more about our efforts, visit Saleforce.com/Equality.
