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At Salesforce, equality is one of our core values and an important part of our culture. We focus on promoting equality across four fronts – equal pay, equal education, equal rights and equal opportunity. As part of this commitment, Salesforce has published its first UK Gender Pay Gap report, based on the criteria established by the UK government that looks at the difference between the median earnings of men and women, not taking into account equal pay for equal work.

Salesforce is proud of the action we've taken on equal pay. Two years ago, we made a commitment to ensure equal pay for equal work at Salesforce. Since then, we've conducted two global equal pay assessments, resulting in the company spending approximately $6 million to address any unexplained differences in pay between men and women. And we will continue to monitor and review employee compensation on an ongoing basis.

The findings of Salesforce's UK gender pay gap reflect Salesforce's having more men than women in leadership roles in the UK. As part of our commitment to Equality, we are actively working to increase the pipeline of women in leadership roles in the UK and throughout the company.

 

Advancing Women in the Workplace at Salesforce

Retaining female employees and empowering women to grow their careers is a key focus for Salesforce, and we're advancing more women into leadership through:

  • High Potential Leadership Programme: The programme aims to identify the future leaders of our business and provide them with additional mentoring and coaching to grow their careers. This programme led to a 37% increase in the number of women promoted in the UK last year.
  • Employee Resource Groups: Salesforce supports 10 employee resource groups, called Ohana Groups, to provide a community for underrepresented groups and their allies. The Women's Network is our oldest and largest Ohana Group globally with more than 6,000 members across 30 hubs. Founded in 2008, it includes LeanIn Circles, volunteering and mentorship opportunities, and Women in Technology programmes.
  • Family support: Our policies around parental leave and flexible working are designed to give both men and women equal opportunity to spend time with their family and equal opportunity to return to work. For example, our Parental Leave Program enables both men and women to be the Primary Caregiver of their child with 26 weeks of parental leave.
  • Industry Action: Salesforce has joined forces with other key industry organisations as a signatory of the Tech Talent Charter which aims to deliver greater diversity in the UK tech workforce. Signatories of the charter have made a number of pledges in relation to their approach to recruitment and retention.

 

Engaging leadership and candidates

We are focused on ensuring that Equality is a priority for our leadership teams and that we have the right processes in place to reach a diverse candidate pool, including:

  • Diversity Dashboard: In 2017, we created a diversity dashboard, which we send to our executive team on a monthly basis with their diversity numbers and progress. We have found that this helps our leadership to keep equality top of mind, and identify where their teams can improve.
  • Unconscious Bias Training: All our managers are provided with access to unconscious bias training - from understanding how unconscious bias affects employee performance to recognising bias during the recruitment process.
  • Inclusive Hiring Process: A foundational step on the path to Equality is the hiring process — a time to reach the most qualified and diverse candidates. Last year, we implemented inclusive hiring principles to help remove bias from the hiring process.
  • Diverse Range of Graduates: At the entry level, we’re striving to hire a diverse range of graduates that reflect the diversity of the community we operate in. This year, our FutureForce intake in the UK was 74% female, up from 70% last year.

 

Investing in the workforce of the future

At Salesforce, we believe Equality starts with education, and we engage with our local community to provide equal access to a quality education and encourage young people to pursue careers in the tech industry:

  • Salesforce has given almost £150,000 in grants to Stemettes, the social enterprise that encourages more young women to take STEM subjects and thrive in STEM careers. Our volunteers regularly work to support the group’s growth and mentor individuals.
  • We’ve also ‘adopted’ an East London academy, School21, to provide mentorship to students and support STEM education programmes.
  • Over the past year, more than 1,200 young people have come to workshops and events at Salesforce Tower London to learn about STEM and we will continue to do all we can to give opportunities to young women with tech-related talent.

 

At Salesforce, our goal is to create workplaces that reflect the communities we serve and a culture where everyone feels valued, heard and included. Together with our customers, partners, employees and communities, we will continue to work towards Equality For All.

To learn more about our efforts, visit Saleforce.com/Equality.