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Explore Salesforce Culture and Values

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Describe the four key pillars of Salesforce culture.
  • Define Salesforce’s five core values and how they show up in our day-to-day work.
  • Identify behaviors that help Salesforce build trusted relationships and connections.
  • Summarize why Salesforce believes business is the greatest platform for change.
  • Recognize how Salesforce strengthens community and collaboration through connection.

Our Culture

So... what makes Salesforce, Salesforce?

In a word—drumroll, please—culture. Salesforce’s values-driven culture is what drives our performance, guides us, connects us, helps us deliver for our customers, and empowers us to do the best work of our lives.

In fact, at Salesforce, we’re as intentional about our culture as we are about our products—and we have been since day one. 

When Salesforce was founded in 1999, our co-founders—including CEO Marc Benioff and Chief Technology Officer Parker Harris—had the vision to help companies connect with their customers in a whole new way. To do this, they introduced a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system that we continue to grow and innovate upon today.

But, they also knew that to realize this vision, they needed to be principled in how they achieved success. So, they set forth to create a different kind of company—one with a purpose beyond profit that was grounded in a few simple truths, including: 

  • Business is the greatest platform for change.
  • Values create value.
  • Our customers’ success is our success.
  • We serve all of our stakeholders—our customers, employees, partners, communities, the planet, and society as a whole.

Through the years, Salesforce’s unique culture has consistently earned global recognition as one of FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For and one of Great Place to Work’s Best Workplaces in the World.

We use these four pillars to describe what Salesforce culture is all about: 

  • Core Values: Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, Sustainability
  • Trusted Relationships
  • Business as the Greatest Platform for Change
  • Connection

Salesforce employees collaborating

Let’s discover how each pillar contributes to Salesforce culture. 

Our Values Create Value

To put it simply, our core values—Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and Sustainability—guide everything we do, from how we work with our stakeholders to how we show up for our communities.

As the world’s #1 CRM, our values inspire and enable us to achieve unprecedented levels of success for our customers, our partners, our communities, and ourselves. We strive to bring out the best in one another, deliver success to our customers, and inspire the entire industry through our actions. 

Trust

Trust is our #1 value. We are accountable to our stakeholders—customers, partners, employees, and communities. We build trust through the integrity of our technology, transparency, deep listening, delivering on commitments, and leading with ethics and integrity.

Here are a few ways we keep trust top of mind:

  • We update a devoted site, trust.salesforce.com, with real-time information about our system performance and security.
  • We build technology for all by bringing together ethics, accessibility, and inclusive design practices.
  • All employees complete annual Security Awareness and Code of Conduct trainings.

Customer Success

When our customers succeed, we succeed. Through trusted relationships, we earn the privilege of enabling our customers to achieve extraordinary things. We are our customers’ most important and relevant partner, guiding them to success in the new digital economy.

  • With our Customer 360, we’ll power more than 2 trillion annual B2B and B2C transactions for more than 150,000 companies and millions of Trailblazers.
  • We’re helping organizations across all industries—from Manufacturing to Media, Consumer Goods to Communications—digitally transform with industry-specific solutions.
  • We have the #1 Success Ecosystem—providing unmatched learning resources and expertise to help our customers be successful.

Innovation

Innovation comes from everyone. We innovate together, with relevant, easy, integrated, scalable, and global products that enable our customers to build trusted relationships with their customers. We create visionary technologies and ideas that solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.

  • We deliver three seasonal releases a year, with features driven by our customers' feedback.
  • With Slack—our Productivity Platform—we’re changing how companies and customers connect and collaborate.
  • We unveiled Salesforce Genie Data Cloud, now powered by Tableau, the world’s first-ever, real-time CRM with powerful automation, always-on intelligence, and real-time hyperscale data.

Equality

We are all active allies striving to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace, and more equal world. We have a great opportunity—and responsibility—to ensure every human being benefits from the power of Salesforce. 

  • We set ambitious representation goals and publish quarterly updates to hold ourselves accountable.
  • We were one of the first companies to evaluate whether there were any gaps in pay, and we continue to conduct and publish regular equal pay audits that consider gender globally, and race and ethnicity in the U.S.
  • We have 13 Employee Resource Groups—known as Equality Groups—that help us create communities of inclusion, belonging, and allyship.

Sustainability

We lead boldly to address the climate emergency. We drive systemic change to help every organization achieve net zero carbon emissions, knowing that everything rests on a stable climate—including the wellbeing of our planet's most vulnerable communities. 

  • We developed Net Zero Cloud, a complete sustainability management system.
  • We’ve personally committed to the conservation and restoration of 100 million trees over the next decade as part of 1t.org.
  • We’ve achieved 100% renewable energy for our operations.

We’re Built on Trusted Relationships

Salesforce is all about bringing companies and customers together—after all, “relationship” is our middle name. (Customer Relationship Management, anyone?)

And these trusted relationships extend beyond our customers. We’re also focused on building trusted relationships with our teams, our partners, our communities, and our entire Trailblazer ecosystem. Here are just a few ways our relationships show up: 

  • Trailblazer Economy: We’ve powered an entire Salesforce ecosystem—one that will create nearly $1.6 trillion in new business revenue. And it will lead to the creation of 9.3 million new jobs by 2026, according to IDC, a market intelligence firm.
  • Teams: Our teams are the beating heart of Salesforce; we’re there for one another, always. One of our favorite stories? How employees rallied together to support fellow colleagues and their loved ones during India’s COVID surge.
  • Communities: Through Citizen Philanthropy, our employees are making a huge collective impact, whether through volunteering time or making monetary donations.
  • The World: We started #TeamEarth as a call to action to help build a world where people, planet, and profit can all thrive together.

Trusted relationships are at the heart of everything we do and who we are as Trailblazers. We’re pioneers, lifelong learners, innovators, leaders and, most importantly, builders of a better world for all. 

Salesforce employees coming together

Business Is the Greatest Platform for Change

Our core values aren’t just words–we put them into action every day because we believe business is the greatest platform for change.

Together, we have a responsibility to do well by all our shareholders and stakeholders. We lead by example, spearheading initiatives in philanthropy, racial equality and justice, climate action, and the ethical and humane use of technology. Here are a few ways we’re blazing a trail of impact (and how you can, too!):

We’re Connected Everywhere

Connection is how we show up and build trust with each other, our customers, our partners, and our communities. It's about coming together for both in-person and asynchronous connection to collaborate, learn, give back, and have fun together.

From coming together at our largest family reunion, Dreamforce, to Slacking with customers, here are a few ways we connect:

  • Our Productivity Platform: Through Slack, we’re able to join together through our projects, teams, shared interests, and emojis. Become a Slack expert over on the Slack Blog.
  • Our Global Campus: Whether we’re setting up a customer meeting in one of our global offices or catching views on the 'Ohana Floor, we come together with intention in-person.
  • Our Communities: We create community everywhere we go—from in-person at a local office to remotely through our Salesforce@Home community.
  • Our Events: There are events for everyone—with both in-person and virtual experiences. (Say hello to our streaming platform, Salesforce+!)

So, How’s That for Culture?

Here at Salesforce, we support and deliver for our customers, build trust and connection, create and innovate, care and stay Connected Everywhere. Together, we’re delivering success for our customers, trailblazing business as the greatest platform for change, and striving to create a more equitable and sustainable world.

A woman wearing a “Trailblazer” jacket

And here’s the best part: our culture will continue to evolve. It’s living and breathing, taking shape and learning from each new employee, each new customer, and each new experience. We shape it together. 

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