To fix the gender gap, startups need to think about diversity from the beginning

Fixing the hooman-canine gap at Tech in Asia HQ in Singapore (Photo by Tech in Asia’s Huiyi Lee)

An entrepreneur builds a startup; chances are that he’s a man. And then it’s likely he hires more men as the fledgling business takes on early employees. That startup grows and then hires male managers. It’s a monotone picture familiar to anyone who watches the tech industry.

Cindy Robbins, Salesforce’s executive vice president of “global employee success” (yes, she concedes, that’s essentially human resources) reckons startups need to be aware of this spiral, which has resulted in the gender inequality crisis that Silicon Valley is now beginning to try to fix.

She says startups now need to instill gender equality and diversity into their culture.

“I recently went to a summit that we had for startups – some companies through our Salesforce Ventures that we invest in – and these are new cloud companies and a lot of the CEOs are talking about how they hire, how they develop their culture. And what I told them is, you know, they also have a unique responsibility and opportunity to put this in their core culture early on,” Cindy explains. “I encourage them to look at that and do that – because this is not an issue that’ll go away.”

Moving on up

The CEOs of small startups and tech giants alike have a duty, she goes on, to set the tone and priorities with hiring so that the workplace doesn’t exclude female employees from moving into leadership positions. “If it doesn’t start at the top, it likely won’t ever get done,” she stresses.

Cindy Robbins

That’s how Cindy took a few steps up the ladder in the past few years at Salesforce, she explained to Tech in Asia recently on the sidelines of the firm’s huge Dreamforce 2015 conference in San Francisco. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff set up a program to give, as Cindy describes it, “high-potential females […] some visibility, a seat at the table” at quarterly strategic meetings alongside senior VPs. The goal was for 30 percent women at the table.

After she and colleague Leyla Seka got invited back several times to those meetings, it led to bigger roles and bigger titles for both of them, with Leyla going on to become general manager of Salesforce’s Desk.com as Cindy moved up to EVP of HR.

No excuses

It was a “huge mistake” not to put inclusion into the company’s culture from the outset, said Marc in an onstage session the day after I spoke with Cindy. He said he wishes he could turn back the clock 16 years to fix it earlier. But “it was not part of the narrative back then.”

The session’s moderator, Kara Swisher – who swapped out her trademark shades for glasses after walking on stage for the discussion about women and diversity in tech – leapt on Marc’s comment to say that “unconscious bias isn’t an excuse for laziness.”

“The irony of two men talking about women!” Recode’s Kara Swisher (right) zings/interviews Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff (left) and co-founder Parker Harris (center) at Dreamforce 2015 (Photo by Jakub Mosur Photography)

Visibility

Fix it now