Workday’s Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Workday embraces diversity—including different perspectives, insights, backgrounds, and skills—because it fuels innovation, and creates a broader connection to the world. We believe that all employees deserve equal pay and an equal chance to succeed.

We’ve always been committed to pay parity. Our Chief People Officer Ashley Goldsmith and her team conduct an annual company-wide gender pay analysis, to ensure fair and equal pay between men and women in the same role. During last year's annual compensation cycle, we re-ran our previous pay parity analyses and found a small number of disparities, which we were able to adjust quickly.

We have a market-based pay structure that compares our roles to that of our peers in each region. This process ensures we pay according to the market value of every job we offer, diminishing the role of unconscious bias and structural barriers.

We’re also committed to hiring and promoting the best people into leadership roles regardless of gender. Many of our executive leaders, in addition to Ashley, are women, including our Chief Information Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Diversity Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President Corporate Strategy, Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Customer Officer, President of EMEA and SVP of Global Marketing, as are a number of Workday vice presidents. Having a diverse workforce that brings many different viewpoints and experiences to work each day is critical to our success.

We have been recognised by Great Place to Work as the #2 workplace for women in the UK, and in the United States we ranked #10 for women and #7 for diversity in the Fortune: 100 Best Workplaces.

The gender pay gap, as outlined by the UK Government, is the difference in the average hourly wage of all men and women across a workforce. This ‘pay gap’ is impacted by the number of women across the workforce and is particularly influenced by the proportion of women compared to men in the most senior leadership positions. Workday is fully committed to improving this and, along with many of our peers, we are pursuing forward-thinking policies and gender-equal recruitment policies.

This is an IT industry challenge, and we, like many other technology companies, will continue to drive efforts to correct this historical imbalance. We remain committed to this path and believe we’re already beginning to see the fruits of our labour. That’s why we’re proud that in the last year alone we’ve reduced the base pay gap from 18% to 11%. But it is a long-term project for the entire IT industry, and we know there is a lot of work to do.

We firmly believe that the technology sector must continue to promote, encourage and develop female talent. Workday remains committed to that goal, and our global leadership team is testament to that commitment. For the IT industry, pay parity is essential. Every organisation must show that regardless of gender, people are being salaried, bonused, and rewarded in the same way. Pay parity is critical as we work to close the gender pay gap; we must encourage women to move into the technology industry at all levels if we are to drive change.

As part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion we are continuing to drive equality in our business by:

• Leading by example. For women to set their sights on higher-paying roles, they need to see it to believe it. We all need to be able to see what’s possible, and the only way that can happen is when we see others like ourselves in positions we aspire to. In the UK, working with our Women@Workday peer group we arranged a number of events in the last year to profile interesting and inspiring stories of women at Workday across different age groups, business groups and work locations.
• Providing greater transparency about diversity progress for employees and Workday customers. We are continually working to be transparent about our diversity progress. In our FY19 Global Impact Report, we reported diversity data, including percentages related to gender and ethnicity. In addition to Workday’s reporting, we deliver reporting capabilities within Workday to help our customers stay compliant with ever-changing diversity regulations, and customised dashboards and scorecards that enable Workday and its customers to continually monitor their diversity progress.
• Conducting a pay parity analysis at least once a year. We use a diversity dashboard that lets us regularly examine HR data to better understand gender parity and other diversity-related goals. Pay parity analysis provides a statistical review for disparity, and diversity dashboards are a real-time representation of current staff and can be viewed at any time. We compare things such as compensation, promotions, and job movement, and diversity rates by job level. We’re getting better at understanding this data all the time and continue to drill down into more specifics.
• Making a commitment in writing. As an organisation we have previously committed to conducting an annual companywide gender pay analysis, reviewing hiring and promotion processes to reduce unconscious bias and structural barriers, and embedding equal pay efforts into broader enterprise-wide initiatives.
• Supporting relationship-building and mentoring. For many women, peers play an important role in mentoring and showing what’s possible. In 2018 we launched the Women@Workday peer group to help support a diverse workplace across our UK offices. The network focuses on empowering our female talent by leveraging our unique culture to help build meaningful connections and enable career progression. We also offer employees opportunities to attend external events locally and globally. Last year, more than 150 women from Workday attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, in Orlando, Florida, which is the world’s largest gathering of women technologists. In London, we sponsored the Women of Silicon Roundabout 2019 conference and our VP, People spoke at the event. We also support annual milestones like International Women’s Day locally.
• Empowering women to bring their best selves to work. Women are more likely to be the main caregivers in their families, whether that’s for young children or elderly parents. According to the latest release from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), women carry out an overall average of 60% more unpaid work than men; 16 hours a week of unpaid work for men, which includes adult care and child care, laundry and cleaning, compared to the 26 hours of unpaid work done by women each week. All employees need to feel supported in their workplaces, and to know their value won’t diminish when they need to focus on personal needs. We offer enhanced benefit programmes to support the specific needs of both women and men at Workday to help them balance their personal and work life. Workday offers supplemented maternity, paternity and adoption leave coverage, as well as additional paid time off for dependents. We have also partnered with Care.com to offer emergency child or elder/adult care in-home or in-centre. All Workday employees and their dependents including part-time workers are eligible for benefits, including same-sex or opposite-sex, domestic partners, whether married or in a long-term partnership. In the last twelve months we have launched a programme with Maven globally to provide on-demand support at every stage of the parenting journey—from fertility and pregnancy, to the return to work. And from April 2020 all employees and their dependants enrolled in our fully funded private medical insurance will have access to 24/7 online GP appointments. 

We are proud of our work to ensure pay parity for men and women (equal pay for equal work) across our global organisation. The figures below show the current total pay gap in the Workday UK organisation, based on the total number of male and female employees.