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Why Marc Benioff makes Salesforce employees do volunteer work on their first day

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Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is known as a leader who not only cares about his company’s success, but the success of the community around him as well.

To ensure that every Salesforce employee adopts this philanthropic mindset, there is one thing he has everyone do on their first day with the organization.

“On their first day of work, we take everyone and we show them the kitchen and the bathroom and their office and their desk,” he tells The New York Times. “Then we take them out and they do service in the afternoon. They’ll go to a homeless shelter or they’ll go to the hospital or go to a public school. This is a very core part of our culture.”

Benioff says he wants everyone at his company to feel good about their job, because the work they do is not only rewarding to themselves, but also to others.

Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce speaking the 2018 WEF in Davos, Switzerland.
Adam Galica | CNBC

“Why do people want to be here? It’s not that we have more amenities than everybody else,” he explains. “We have less. We don’t have a cafeteria. But we have a stronger purpose and a stronger mission.”

Salesforce came in at No. 4 on , making it one of the most attractive employers for job seekers today. Not only does Benioff take pride in infusing purpose into his company culture, but he also places a lot of emphasis on equal pay for all employees. Last year, , his company spent an additional $3 million to eliminate any existing pay disparities.

“Every CEO needs to look at if they’re paying men and women the same,” he said at the 2017 World Economic Forum, according to Fortune. “That is something that every single CEO can do today.”

Benioff credits his company’s success to a trusting work environment. He explains that a culture without trust runs the risk of experiencing the backlash Facebook is receiving now over its data privacy issues. In a company memo leaked earlier this year, Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth defended the social network’s determination to grow at any cost, even if that meant personal information being leaked or harmful threats being made on the platform.

“He talks about putting growth above trust, and you can’t do that,” Benioff tells The New York Times. “Never put growth before trust. If you put growth above trust, then all of a sudden you create a toxic culture. People don’t want to work in that environment or use the product.”

Benioff calls on more companies to build not only a trusting workplace, but also a workplace that thrives off community service.

“This idea that somebody put into our heads — that companies are somehow these kind of individuated units that are separate from society and don’t have to be paying attention to the communities they’re in — that is incorrect,” he tells the Times. “We need a more enlightened view about the role of companies. This company is not somehow separate from everything else. Are we not all connected? Are we not all one? Isn’t that the point?”

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