Equality is a core value at Salesforce, and one of the most powerful examples of this is our ongoing commitment to equal pay. Four years ago, we committed to making equal pay an integral part of our company DNA, and today on Equal Pay Day I'm proud to say that commitment has never been stronger.

We've completed our fourth companywide equal pay assessment, which found that 5% of our 35,000 employees globally required adjustments. Of those who required adjustments, 39% were women, 54% were men, and 7% were due to race and ethnicity. As a result, the company spent $1.6 million to make those adjustments.

To date, Salesforce has spent a total of $10.3 million to ensure equal pay for equal work.

Many factors contribute to pay inequality — market fluctuations and M&A activity to name a few — but we're glad to see the numbers continue to go down each year despite our rapid growth. In 2018, for example, we hired more than 8,500 employees and completed our biggest acquisition to date.

Every year we conduct a pay audit we learn something new that helps us continue to improve upon our process. This year, we've incorporated equal pay directly into our annual employee compensation process.

But it's not enough to address pay during compensation planning. We're looking at every aspect of the employee journey to help level the playing field, starting with the recruiting process. We don't ask the question, “what is your current compensation?" but rather “what is the compensation you expect?” And once an employee joins, we're working to institute a standardized process for setting salaries from day one. We also look at the distribution of promotions and how merit bonuses are allocated across gender and race throughout an employee's career with us.