Workday’s Commitments to Further Support Equity in the Workplace and in Communities

Since day one, our employees have been our number one core value, helping shape who we are as a company. As part of this, we’re furthering our commitment to equity in the workplace and being intentional with our belonging and diversity (B&D) efforts. These include establishing employee belonging councils (EBCs), creating a B&D team that is 100% dedicated to these efforts, and developing a new approach: Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity (VIBE^TM), which is about embracing everyone and making sure they feel valued and included. 

While we’ve made great progress, we know we need to do more and be better. The senseless acts of violence this year against members of the Black community have shined a light on our responsibility, as individuals and as organizations, to support social and racial justice. As difficult as these last few months have been, for me personally and for a world grappling with racism, I look to the future with a continued sense of hope and humanity. We’re more awake and aware than we’ve ever been, and I’m encouraged by my Workmates who share in my vision to take meaningful action. That’s why I’m excited to expand on the four principles I outlined in July and share our commitments to create more equity in the workplace and in our communities.

Listening and Learning

Our Workmates care a lot about our commitments to equity and have fantastic ideas about how to achieve them. Knowing this, we felt it was important to start by listening, learning, and gathering input from them through surveys, town halls, and brainstorming sessions, where we received more than 200 ideas on how we can be better. We also talked extensively with our EBCs, including the Talented Tenth, our EBC for our Black community and allies, which have played an instrumental role in influencing our actions.

As a critical part of our efforts, we formed our VIBE Accelerator Team, 20 dedicated Workmates from our engineering, legal, people analytics, professional services, recruiting, sales, and Workday on Workday teams who are focusing, full-time for the next year, on turning our ambitious B&D plans into reality.

Our Company Commitments

We know there's a lot of work to be done and areas to consider, but as we look ahead, we’re focused on where we can have the most impact and where we need to see the most immediate progress. These commitments, developed specifically in response to the events of this year, must fuel meaningful action. To support them, we’re making an additional investment of more than $45 million over the next three years. At the same time, our broader B&D efforts, led by our B&D team and including our EBCs, will continue, with an expanded reach as we focus on involving all of our Workmates across the globe in our VIBE approach.

Hiring and developing diverse talent. With a core value of employees, we know that diverse talent is a cornerstone of our success, which is why we’re committed to increasing the recruitment, hiring, and advancement of underrepresented talent at Workday. While our B&D team will work across all Workmate communities, our VIBE Accelerator Team will focus initially on increasing Workday’s Black and Latinx populations, which are currently the most underrepresented in our workplace, and bettering the experience of those populations.

Our actions:

• Increase overall representation of Black and Latinx employees in the U.S. by 30% by 2023.
• Double the number of Black and Latinx leaders in the U.S. by 2023.
• Invest 25,000 hours in training over the next year to help ensure all people leaders can attract, recruit, hire, and advance employees of all backgrounds.

Cultivating a culture of belonging. While recruiting the best diverse talent is a critical step,  it’s just as important to create a culture of belonging, where our Workmates can bring their best selves to work and have a sense of purpose, trust, connection, and growth.

Our actions:

• Help ensure less than a 3% difference in belonging for all Workmates across all demographics (as measured by the Great Place to Work questions that power the belonging outcome of our VIBE Index^TM). 
• Infuse VIBE into how we think about and act on our Workday core values.
• Invest 150,000 hours in career development programs and education that increase visibility and opportunity for Black and Latinx talent over the next year.

Building inclusive products and technology. We take our role as the HR software provider for some of the world’s largest organizations with great responsibility, and we will continue to develop and deliver products that help empower Workday and our customers to accelerate B&D.

Our actions:

• Empower our customers via product and solution innovations to measure and benchmark diversity and belonging in the workplace, including:
  • VIBE Central^TM in 2020. VIBE Central brings all diversity- and inclusion-related data into one consolidated dashboard in Workday Human Capital Management.
  • VIBE Index^TM in 2021. VIBE Index measures the relative performance and outcomes of an organization’s efforts across five categories to identify the highest opportunity for positive change, as well as a VIBE Index score for overall workplace equity.
• Offer workshop services at no charge for our first 300 customers deploying VIBE Central.
• Publish a biannual B&D product roadmap for our customers to highlight innovative solutions.

Strengthening our communities. We know that to truly have an impact, we need to expand our efforts beyond our organization and must support policies, practices, and organizations that help empower underrepresented minorities through meaningful philanthropic investment and engagement.

Our actions:

• Donate $10 million, as previously announced, to social justice initiatives over the next year.
• Create opportunities for Workmates to contribute 250,000 hours toward mentoring and skills-based volunteering in communities around the globe by 2023.
• Accelerate Opportunity Onramps hiring to fill 20% of our early to mid-career full-time roles by 2023.

Hope for the Future

These actions will take time, but along with Workday’s leaders and our Workmates, I’m committed to lasting change. We will learn as we go, reach important milestones, and invest the time, resources, and skills needed to get the job done. It's only through our collective energy and efforts that we can have a positive impact, and it starts with every person doing their part to help create equity for all.