Explore Equality in the Salesforce Ecosystem
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain how companies can use Salesforce to create greater equality.
- Explain how the Salesforce Partner Community supports equality.
- Recognize ways the Trailblazer Community drives equality.
At Salesforce, we believe that it isn’t enough for businesses to do well; businesses must also do good and use their business as a platform for change. That’s why we rely on our core values—Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and Sustainability—to guide all of our decisions.
In addition to relying on our Core Values to guide our decisions, we use our own products to be the example we want to inspire in others. Using our own products and technology at Salesforce helps us develop strategies to access a bigger pool of talent, improve the employee experience, and create a welcoming workplace. For example:
- Our chief equality officer uses Marketing Cloud to communicate with company leaders and deliver high-priority messages on our Equality strategy and recommended actions.
- We use Trailhead to help the Salesforce ecosystem understand how to champion Equality within their own organizations through Equality badges (just like this one!).
- We use Slack, our internal communications platform, to engage employees on our #Equality channel and channels for each of our 16 Equality Groups, our employee-led resource groups. Slack allows us to curate and highlight the priorities, programs, initiatives, and events that are driving our strategy forward.
- We use Equality Network, modeled after our Sales Cloud product, to manage and prioritize processes and data for Equality Groups.
At Salesforce, our equality approach is and has always been rooted in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
Connect Customer Success and Equality
Equality and Customer Success come together in a particularly powerful way. The Office of Equality at Salesforce regularly engages with customers to share how we develop and implement our Equality strategy across our entire ecosystem. Our ongoing equality conversations with customers across industries cover several topics, including:
- Implementing employee resource group strategies
- Engaging in fair, objective, competency-based practices in hiring and promotions
- Providing inclusive leadership
- Creating welcoming, inclusive, and consistent experiences for all employees
- Opening and creating access to reach top talent
And it’s not just talk—we have seen the link between Equality and customer success in action. When our customers invest in their Equality journey, they create a culture in which every employee feels seen, valued, and heard—and business success follows. The more inclusive a team, the better it performs, and the better our employees can show up for customers.
Support Equality Through the Partner Community
Like our customers, our more than 12,000 partners play a critical role in connecting our core values of Equality and Customer Success. We partner with companies in our ecosystem to design better strategies to build workforces that help us innovate, sell, and implement our products.
We also support equality through our partner ecosystem with:
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Salesforce Fundamentals, a free 3-week course that prepares job seekers for their first roles in the ecosystem.
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Live Salesforce-sponsored learning experiences on Clicked, which enable people to practice their skills, build portfolios, and explore career options in the Salesforce ecosystem.
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The Partner Collective Impact initiative, which showcases companies and individuals in the Salesforce ecosystem taking action to positively impact change. Salesforce partner companies can take the pledge here.
Drive Equality Through the Trailblazer Community
The Salesforce ecosystem extends beyond our customers and partners to include our vast and amazing Trailblazer Community! We love to help Trailblazers learn, connect, have fun, and give back together.
In 2019, we surveyed hundreds of active Trailblazer Community members, and they shared several benefits of engaging with the Trailblazer Community. Here are a few highlights.
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90% said that participation in the Community helps them accelerate innovation at their company.
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80% said that the peer connections they’ve made help them increase adoption and productivity.
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73% said that the Community helped them build professional networks.
Our Trailblazers are not only engaged with our products and offerings but are also deeply interested in the Salesforce values and culture that inform them. Trailblazers are looking for innovative ways to maximize Salesforce success in their organizations and make the world a better place. By earning badges focused on Equality, Trailblazers gain a deeper investment in their organizations and keep the conversation going across the Trailblazer Community.
The Equality conversation is also taken to the mainstage at Dreamforce and TDX. Here Trailblazers can hear from our Equality leaders and luminary speakers on how to create a culture of belonging using the skills gained on Trailhead and across the Trailblazer Community.
The Trailblazer series on Salesforce+ follows the stories of 11 Trailblazers who have transformed their lives and the communities around them by driving change and embedding Equality in their path to success.
At Salesforce, the exchange of ideas, solutions, and challenges among our customers, partners, and community plays an important role as we continue to drive equality. Now that you know how Salesforce drives Equality, we hope you join us on our journey. Remember: Positive change requires us all to do our part! The more we work together, the greater success we see.