Rebooting Work: How Salesforce Builds Trust with AI in Singapore
Clare Sim
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Most know the name Salesforce, a name synonymous with customer relationship management in many countries. A pioneer of AI in CRM since 2014, Salesforce knew that in order to succeed, trust is crucial. Trust is our #1 value, says Salesforce¹, we earn the trust of our customers, employees, and ecosystem… and we deliver the industry’s most trusted infrastructure.
It’s no wonder Salesforce has been featured on our Best Workplaces™ Lists in Singapore for a decade. Responses from employees a decade ago and last year give us a glimpse of what makes it consistently a great workplace:
It’s indeed the high-trust cultures that make flexible work most effective². In this feature, Great Place To Work® examines what a trust culture in Salesforce looks like.
At Salesforce, humans and AI agents work together to drive customer success. Singapore is a crucial growth market for Salesforce’s AI capabilities and its first overseas AI Research hub location³. Salesforce uses data and AI to better understand its workforce, plan for future roles, and make sure employees have specific skills needed to fill them.
Putting its AI agents to work to skill up its broader workforce, Salesforce invests in critical resources like Career Connect (an AI-powered internal talent marketplace), Agentforce for Careers, and Trailhead. Career Connect helps employees identify skill gaps, receive personalized learning recommendations, and discover role opportunities aligned with their capabilities and aspirations.
Salesforce stands in contrast to typical Singapore companies, where only 42% say their company is investing in their abilities to use artificial intelligence. It partners with selected tertiary institutions in Singapore to ‘equip students with in-demand AI skills through training and certifications’ and connects them to its talent pipeline. This is evidenced by 75% of its Singapore employees saying that people who are hired fit in well at Salesforce.
“Onboarding employees is as much about technology as it is about the human connection,” Theresa Ludvigson, Senior Director of Global Onboarding, writes⁴. “Instead of blasting our new hires with a fire hose of information on their first day, we slowly drip out key information at the right time.”
Studies show that mentorship and feedback during onboarding are crucial as these encourage open communication and trust, which enhances employee retention⁵. In the IT sector, a study found that a 9-month onboarding program led to higher one-year retention rates compared to a 1-week program for the same role⁶.
Salesforce employees gave feedback for onboarding to be more intuitive and seamless, so Salesforce adopted best practices from research – its onboarding program lasts 180 days, with strategic touchpoints⁷.
A week before their first day, new hires are given access to a pre-hire portal, powered by its data cloud technology. New hires no longer receive an ‘overwhelming influx of emails’; their pre-boarding tasks are all in one place. If they need assistance, assigned peer mentors (also known as a ‘Trail Guide’) and a self-service chatbot can help.
New hires have given positive feedback, with one saying, “It’s clear a lot of thought and effort was put into the entire onboarding experience … everything was top-notch and what one would expect from the greatest cloud tech company in the world.” 88% of employees in Singapore say they feel welcomed when they join.
Salesforce is a company which believes learning is a life-long process and has a proper onboarding process where a new hire is not thrown to figure things out on his/her own and is properly being mentored by a trail guide.
– Salesforce Singapore employee
“Our core value of trust permeates every aspect of our work — from developing reliable AI solutions for our customers to nurturing a culture that supports our employees, partners, and the communities we serve. I am deeply proud of our achievements and our ongoing commitment to building a place where our employees, and customers thrive.”
-Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager ASEAN, Salesforce
Salesforce provides up to USD$10,000 in matching donations and 7 days of paid volunteering time off for each employee, who are encouraged to use them. In Singapore, Salesforce employees have consistently found meaning in its commitment to the community, as shown in the following comments extracted at 5-yearly intervals from its Trust Index™ Survey:
Employees in Singapore have spent over 190,000 hours volunteering in their communities and giving over $2 million to non-profits and non-governmental organisations the past two decades⁸. This is evidenced in its latest survey results showing that employee sentiments about Salesforce’s giving back surpass the typical Singapore workplace:
Salesforce’s lasting success in Singapore reflects its deep-rooted culture of trust, ethical innovation, meaningful work, and community impact.
