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Achieving equality for all is one of the greatest challenges that we will face in our lifetime. This is a battle that cannot be won by one company, one leader or any one community. It’s a challenge that every business leader must address.

Salesforce has made equality a core value for our company. We are working to increase equality by focusing our efforts on equal pay, equal advancement, and equal opportunity. In support of this, we offer a wide range of programs that bring this core value to life and also share information, drive awareness and inspire action to the wider community. Some of these initiatives are outlined below:

Equal Pay: Last year we announced our commitment to doing a comprehensive analysis of the salaries of the more than 17,000 global employees we had as of August 1 to determine if men and women were paid equally for comparable work. We put employees in comparable roles into groups and analyzed salaries of those groups to determine whether there were statistically significant wage differences between women and men.  We based our analysis on objective factors that determine pay, such as job function, level and location. If there were unexplained differences, salary adjustments were made for both men and women as needed. Approximately six percent of employees required a salary adjustment, and roughly the same number of women and men were impacted. Salesforce has spent nearly $3 million dollars to eliminate statistically significant differences in pay. We plan to monitor and review salaries on an ongoing basis—making equal pay a part of our company’s DNA.  

Male Leadership panels: held in our Sydney and Melbourne offices where senior males at Salesforce talk about their views on equality and unconscious bias.

New inclusive recruitment process: a new process to ensure females meet other females during the interview stage and where possible have female interviewers.  

Unconscious Bias: developed and delivered a bespoke in-house training course to all people managers on unconscious bias with clear tools to identify and help eliminate bias.

Diversity Matters Video: this year we released a video featuring our employees to demonstrate ‘Why Diversity Matters at Salesforce’:

We’ve taken these actions because we believe diversity and inclusion at all levels is critical to the success of our business. A diverse workforce gives companies like us the unique perspectives needed to build the most innovative products and engage effectively with customers and partners. It's also vital to strengthening our company, delivering customer success, giving back to our communities, winning as a team, and attracting and retaining top talent.

We are on the path to increasing our diversity at Salesforce and recognise that we still have some way to go. That journey starts with transparency and openness. It also starts with a dialogue and small actions that can deliver big change.

As part of that journey we will be hosting a Diversity Program at our upcoming Salesforce World Tour event in Melbourne on April 12th 2016. Our stand out event of the 2016 Diversity Program is a panel event hosted by ABC 7.30 anchor Leigh Sales tackling the topic of 'Gender Diversity: The Next Frontier for Business'. It will feature esteemed speakers - Elizabeth Broderick, Former Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Andrew Stevens, Non-executive Director, Male Champions of Change, Janelle Weissmann, Executive Director UN Women National Committee Australia, Vanessa Hudson Executive Manager Customer & Commercial Relationships, Qantas and myself. (Event guide page on Panelists)

I would encourage any business leader who wants to transform their business and make it a more diverse and inclusive place to come along and listen to this panel. You can register for the event HERE: