This has been a landmark week for Salesforce in the UK. On Wednesday, we welcomed over 6,000 registered delegates at Dreamforce To You London which brought the most important news from Dreamforce back to our UK customers and our extended community.
Yesterday we officially opened the doors to our new "Ohana Floor" at the top of Salesforce Tower London – the first floor of its kind outside North America.
Instead of dedicating this sought-after, top-of-the-tower space to executive offices, we've designed an inspirational space available for all, tying back to our value of Equality.
During the day, this space is open for employees and their guests. Then on weeknights and weekends, we open up the floor to non-profits and foundations to host their own events at no cost.
Why do we take this unique approach? Our founder and co-CEO, Marc Benioff, says it best: “The way to do well is to do good”. People expect businesses like ours to play a greater and more active role in society. We can’t just deliver a profit; we also have a responsibility to benefit everyone in society, so we must step up to meet that challenge.
To celebrate our Ohana Floor, we hosted an official opening ceremony with Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, students, partners, customers, Salesforce employees, religious leaders, and other industry figures.
As part of the opening we were delighted to be recognised by the Mayor of London as one of the first members of the Good Work Standard – a benchmark for the highest employment standards.
Here at Salesforce, giving back is core to our DNA. And as part of that, we want to ensure that every young adult in the UK is workforce ready.
So to mark the floor opening, we announced a $1.25 million grant to education and re-skilling in the UK. $500,000 will go to Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, and another $750,000 grant will help fund the educational charity Ark (Absolute Return for Kids).
Many of our employees have volunteered with Ark and Ada and other non-profit organisations in the UK. In fact, I’m incredibly proud to say that our employees have given back 235,000 volunteer hours across the UK.
But the work doesn’t stop there. Today we also announced the launch of our Pathfinder Training Programme in the UK – the first time it is has been rolled out beyond the US.
In collaboration with our partners Deloitte, this programme is designed to train individuals in technical and business skills to earn a Salesforce Administrator or Developer certification and build a career in our Salesforce ecosystem.
The UK programme will launch with an initial cohort of 50 Pathfinders in 2020, building on its success in Indianapolis, Indiana and San Francisco. I’m incredibly excited to see it transform lives for people from all parts of society, be they students, career changers or military veterans.
We’re looking forward to welcoming the whole community to the Ohana Floor as we continue on our path towards Equality for All.
In the meantime, you can watch all the videos from the Ohana Floor opening event on YouTube.
