In addition to leveraging new technology and increasing revenue, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has another top priority for the $75 billion tech company.
In an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow, Benioff said that closing the gender and racial pay gap is “top of mind.”
“I am deeply concerned that we are at a precipice right now,” the CEO says. “We need to decide what kind of a society we’re going to have going forward.”
Salesforce has spent a total of $6 million since 2015 in adjusting compensation and bonuses in an effort to close the gender and racial wage gap within the company. The company has also started tracking the number of women holding leadership positions.
Benioff says that much of a company’s culture stems from “the tone from the top,” and he’s committed to making his message clear.
“Do we have enough women on our board of directors?” he says. “Do we have enough women in our management team? Do we have enough women in middle management?”
“The answer is generally no, we don’t,” Benioff tells Harlow. “We wear that and we recognize that.”
Benioff joins a growing number of male teach leaders, including Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who have spoken about the importance of women and diversity within their own companies.
OpenTable CEO Christa Quarles told CNBC Make It that in the wake of the leaked internal memo penned by former Google engineer James Damore, which criticized the company’s diversity efforts, Silicon Valley leaders had a quick and positive response. Quarles feels that more managers, both men and women, are coming together to have conversations on the topic.
“I do believe that if you bring men along for the ride,” Quarles said, “you’re going to be a lot more successful.”
Benioff says that Salesforce has a long way to go, but so far, he’s shown no sign of letting the issue slide.
“There’s no finish line,” he says, “when it comes to equality.”
Don’t miss: The gender pay gap in the US is still 20 percent—but millennial women are closing in on men.
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Source: Tech CNBC
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: 'There's no finish line when it comes to equality'