This week marks a major milestone in our history. Ten years ago, following a vision for a new company we discussed over breakfast at a diner in Truckee, Calif., we started Workday.
We’ve also just received a well-timed and very special birthday gift: Fortune named Workday to its “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. This follows news of our No. 4 ranking as best place to work in Ireland last week, and our top rankings in other regional workplace surveys over the years.
To understand the significance of this recognition, let’s go back for a moment to that day in Truckee. We envisioned a company that would bring innovation and customer satisfaction back to a complacent enterprise software industry that was mired in legacy technologies. Yet we knew our idea would succeed only with the right people for growing a strong and healthy culture.
For Workday, we wanted a culture where each person is more focused on “we” rather than “I.” One built on open communication, honesty, integrity, celebrating success, and having fun. This was so important to us that together, we personally interviewed the first 500 Workday employees. This helped Workday build a consistent foundation so that today, with more than 3,700 employees, our culture is stronger than ever.
As a company we’ve maintained an intense focus on customers, and we view our 97% customer satisfaction rate as the best measure of that success. We are honored that our customers have been our best ambassadors over the years, many of whom have readily shared with prospective customers their stories of innovation and change within their organizations. Thanks to their feedback and collaboration and the hard work of everyone at Workday, we now have more than 700 customers globally using our applications in more than 20 languages.
We hope every customer, employee, and partner takes some time to soak in what we’ve accomplished together with the Power of One—an important key to our successes over the past 10 years and what drives our future vision. There’s a lot more to be done, and we’re grateful to be working with each one of you to make it happen.
So with that, please join us in a unified toast: Here’s to another 10 years of happy employees, happy customers, and continuous innovation. Cheers!
