Salesforce, a leader in nonpartisan civic engagement, is empowering employees to vote through civic education videos.

The Civic Alliance is America’s premier nonpartisan network of businesses committed to a thriving democracy. And our more than 1,300 members, employing more than 5.8 million people in the United States, have plenty of experience on how best to engage in civic life.

This summer, our Civic Summer School series aims to capitalize on that knowledge and share lessons learned from civic engagement conducted by a diverse community of business leaders.

Up first is Salesforce , a leader in nonpartisan corporate civic engagement. On July 13, Natalie Tran , Executive Director of CAA FOUNDATION INC and co-founder of the Civic Alliance, chatted with Margaret Taylor , Salesforce’s Head of Public Affairs, about the effective civic education and voter turnout programs they’ve deployed and the impact they’ve had.

Why does Salesforce prioritize nonpartisan civic engagement?

At Salesforce, civic engagement has been a priority for many years. It’s a way for us to engage employees and the communities in which they live and work. Based on insight from the Civic Alliance’s Corporate Civic Playbook, we know that civic engagement deepens employee purpose and engagement. And a functioning and healthy democracy depends on people who are eligible to show up at the polls and cast an informed ballot. At its most basic function, getting out the vote is crucially important to a business, because a healthy democracy provides the stability that businesses and the market demand. And that’s a priority for Salesforce.

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How do you navigate engaging employees in international markets?

Over the past year, we’ve been looking to our team on the ground in global markets asking: ‘What would be helpful for you? What’s the information people need to know? Are there voter guides they might need?’ In Canada, Spain, and The Netherlands we found that answering these key questions and sharing basic election information via? Slack channels - our communications platform – was very well received.?

I’ll note that one challenge outside the U.S. is that it’s hard to get metrics when you don’t have a civic tool like TurboVote that shows stats like how many people signed up to register to vote. That said, because of Slack we are able to track emoji engagement - a key metric for sentiment! - and responses to those posts.?

How do you know what’s having an impact?

We try to have actual data where we can. I mentioned TurboVote which we use to track how many people are signing up to register to vote with our Salesforce URL.

The second way we track impact is through our free, online learning platform called Trailhead. A few years ago, we created a Trailhead module so both employees and the public could learn about civic engagement in the U.S., and we can see how many people have completed it.

One thing we have really prioritized is to do something new every year. So whether that’s publicly highlighting employee resource groups (ERGs) who have hosted a voter registration drive or launching a video series, the goal is to have different activities that keep people engaged.??

How do you prioritize all of these ideas?

A lot of it is bandwidth and what we can get done. It’s about making sure it’s additive to what we’re doing and not taking over something else that’s also bringing value.

Pre-pandemic, the civic engagement team did a lot of cool in-person voter registration drives. We of course still have Salesforce civic engagement branded swag to entice people to join us on this journey - “I Voted” socks go a long way!?

But since the pandemic, hybrid is preferable. We pivoted, hosting less in-person programming, and adding resources that people could also come back to—like making video content. We also look for feedback from our ERGs, who are our most engaged employees, ensuring these communities feel supported by our team as a whole. And we learned from them that civic engagement is one of the ways to do that.

You’ve teased a video series a few times. Can you share more??

Last year, there was a lot going on in the U.S. politically. Our Government Affairs team was consistently engaging with employees on a variety of issues that had occurred. And one of the things that became clear was folks didn’t really remember how the U.S. government works. I have a degree in political science, and four years isn’t even enough to be an expert. So, we know that a basic civics course that someone took isn’t enough when you want to show up and get involved on a deeper level.?

One of our ERG leaders reaffirmed this when, after a conversation about a particular government action, she shared “That was helpful; it would be great if there were refresher videos or something like that.” Behold, Salesforce Rock was born. We created four educational videos in the style of SchoolHouse Rock! which we filmed on the National Mall in DC. They’re each about four minutes long and cover topics like how to be civically engaged (which includes how to register to vote and how to serve as a nonpartisan poll worker); what Congress is and its basic functions; what the administration and regulatory bodies are; and what the judicial branch is. Each video provides a basic foundation of each topic, while also showing the faces of our incredible federal affairs team, humanizing them and their work in the process as well. Most importantly, these videos empower our employees with the information they need to make a difference on the issues they care most about.?

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If there’s one recommendation you can share, what would it be?

Pick one thing you think you can do, and do it well—and explain why you’re doing it. It’s like any other project in any other work. Getting out the vote is the core of so much of this, and it’s something you can track, giving you some data to show your leadership metrics. When you partner with someone like the Civic Alliance, you have a support network, tools, and resources for every step of your corporate civic engagement journey.?

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What are your takeaways? Let us know in the comments below, and make sure to join us for our next Civic Summer School event on LinkedIn on July 20, with Bad Robot Productions’ SVP, Alex Sewell.

Interested in starting your civic journey? Join the Civic Alliance for access to nonpartisan resources, messaging, new employee engagement opportunities, and upcoming events.?

And if you’re not yet ready to become a member yet, subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest nonpartisan civic updates.?