In 2015, The Global Gender Gap Report calculated it will take 118 years for the pay equity gap between men and women to close. The gender pay gap exists in 98 percent of the world’s professions, and it gets worse the more education a woman has. Wage disparity costs the average woman $400,000 and robs women with higher education of $2 million over their lifetime. A young woman taking out the same college loan as her male counterpart will take longer to pay off her loan. It will take her longer to buy a house. She will have less money in her retirement account and be more likely to be poor when she’s elderly

Strategy 

Female executives at Salesforce were inspired by WCPG client Patricia Arquette’s speech in which she talked about pay equity after winning an Oscar for her film Boyhood. Following the speech, they approached CEO Marc Benioff and asked him to conduct a pay audit to ensure that women and men at the company were paid equally. Marc agreed and the audit uncovered a $3 Million gap, which was then corrected. WCPG was engaged to help Salesforce further enhance equality work. 

WCPG connected Salesforce with Patricia Arquette and arranged for them to partner on pay equity work, which launched with the Dinner for Equality. At the kick-off event, Marc asked his peer CEOs to agree to work with the White House to sign a pledge to ensure pay equity within their own companies.

Result

This work continues today. Marc has become a national leader on the subject of pay equality, Salesforce employees have an internal program that they are proud of, and Salesforce clients know what the brand stands for.