How Salesforce reached its net zero goals

Ahead of COP28 in Dubai, Suzanne DiBianca, chief impact officer and EVP of corporate relations at Salesforce, enters the BBC’s Executive Lounge to talk about creating the next generation of sustainable companies.

While calls for corporate sustainability grow louder each day, Suzanne DiBianca’s job has never been so important.

As the chief impact officer and EVP of corporate relations at Salesforce, a software company specialising in customer-relationship management, DiBianca leads its global sustainability initiatives. Her aim: to promote positive social and environmental change within the company, and the larger business space. 

DiBianca tells the BBC how important it is not only for companies to walk the walk with their own practices, but also provide a blueprint – and the resources – to empower other organisations to reach net zero and hit the goals of the Paris Agreement. “It’s going to require a lot of collaboration, a lot of regulation and a lot of hard work to try to get as close to that goal as possible,” she says.

How do you see your role in Salesforce’s sustainability mission?

My job is to ensure that our sustainability initiatives aren’t seen as altruistic, but rather as a business priority that is properly resourced, both in good economic times and in bad.

We aim to be an example of a company that lives its values and improves the state of the world through its actions. For instance, we reduce our carbon footprint by recycling water, saving drinking water and prohibiting red meat and plastic bottles at our events. We’ve invested in the planet by establishing 1t.org to conserve, restore and grow one-trillion trees by 2030. We also support ‘ecopreneurs’ to inspire, enable and foster new solutions and technologies to expedite the path to decarbonisation.

How does Salesforce leadership involve its staff in sustainability efforts?

Originally, we had four company values: “trust”, “innovation”, “customer success” and “equality”. Two years ago, we added “sustainability”, which is now operational throughout the business as a whole. Now, not all sustainability programs are generated by our sustainability team.

For example, our engineering team put together the Carbon to Serve metric, which involves writing code more effectively, running reports with less energy intensity and so on. They reduced their emissions by 26%. The same is true in our marketing team, which put together a goal focused on reusable and digital assets at events (versus physical assets), waste reduction goals, water reduction goals and not having red meat at events.

These goals have largely developed in an idea phase within our employee base, then our sustainability team helps to implement them and measure them over time. 

Our research has found that there’s a wide talent pool hungry to get involved in corporate sustainability. In fact, 82% of global employees want to help their company operate more sustainably, but currently lack the necessary qualifications and resources. With this in mind, we leverage free online education solutions, like Trailhead, to upskill our employees on sustainability.

How impactful has data-driven sustainability been at Salesforce and in the wider sustainability sector? 

It’s been incredibly impactful. We get the data, and we’re transparent with it, so others can have a roadmap.

For example, when we looked at our energy data, there was a nearby building, which was an outlier in the emissions component. We approached the landlord and enabled the tenants to install more weatherproofing in the windows, solar on the roof, things that could reduce the building’s energy consumption. If we didn’t have the data, we would never have known that it was a poor-performing building. 

This is an example of when you have the data, you can make choices that make the invisible visible.

The Salesforce Climate Action Plan outlines six sustainability priorities that say “every company can adopt to accelerate our collective journey to net zero”. Yet for some small companies, the financial and administrative burdens of sustainability may appear to outweigh its benefits. How would you sell sustainability to small business leaders? 

The same way we would sell sustainability to a big business leader: when you reduce your energy costs, and reduce your travel costs, you save your company money. It’s a win-win, not an either/or. 

What is your ‘north star’ when taking key leadership decisions? 

Our north star is twofold. Firstly, we approach leadership decision-making through the lens of our company’s values – namely, trust, customer success, innovation, sustainability and equality. Secondly, we have a responsibility to serve all our stakeholders – employees, customers, partners, shareholders, communities and the planet.

Because we lead with our values and stakeholders in mind, it makes it easier when we have to decide when and where to invest resources. Ultimately, the planet is our largest stakeholder – and we can’t succeed as a business, and grow economies, without arresting climate change.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.