Bring Your Kids To Work Day – The Online Edition

The transition to working from home was easier in some ways than others. Reducing your daily commute from your bedroom to your kitchen table? Easy. Juggling work and child care at the same time during a global health crisis? Challenging. Salesforce expanded its benefits to help its employees, especially parents, find their balance. And, we didn’t forget about the fun!

Every year, we organize bring your kids to work days in many of our offices. While the pandemic provided a formidable obstacle this year, we still wanted to keep the tradition alive. Our Employee Engagement and Events team had a creative solution: A virtual week-long program full of sessions available in six different languages and across all time zones.

“Our goal was to create engaging and informative quality content for kids to make parents’ lives just a little bit easier. We wanted kids and parents to be able to choose from a wide variety of sessions according to their interests, time zones, and language preferences,” explains Courtney Loomis, Director of Employee Events. The plan was set, all we needed to do was to create about 100+ sessions to delight, entertain, and educate our Salesforce kids. Easy, right?

Creating the sessions was only possible with the help of a special resource – our fantastic employees. Nearly 50 employees volunteered to host more than 180 sessions (143 hours of content), on topics like beekeeping, coding, Zumba, singing, and more. We also had a special story time session with our executives and daily giving back challenges. Overall, more than 5,000 kids participated.

So what motivated our employees to take time out of their busy days to share their knowledge, create and host those sessions and entertain their colleagues kids?

"Sharing your strengths with others helps you grow"

Kristin Haug is a Business Development Representative located in Chicago and speaks American Sign Language (ASL). When she heard about Salesforce Adventurers Club through Abilityforce — the Equality Group that unites people with visible and invisible disabilities and their allies — she raised her hand to create a session teaching ASL to our Adventurers.

“I like working with kids, I am a ski instructor and I used to tutor kids with disabilities in high school and college. I can only imagine how tough it is for them to be home all day, so I am happy to help.”

“This was the first time for me to teach an online class, and I have to admit, we had some funny little hiccups, like all the kids coming off mute at once,” Kristin laughs. “What really blew me away was how engaged the kids were. Many of them had thoughtful questions and the class was really popular. It was such a motivating experience for me. Being part of the Salesforce Adventurers Club taught me that the littlest things have an impact and sharing your strengths with others helps you grow. There’s always something new to learn or teach.“

Julian Rogers joined Salesforce in the UK as a Solutions Engineer and is currently working in the Competitive Intelligence team. His next career step? Chief Beekeeping Officer.

 

Julian fell in love with beekeeping about eight years ago when he got his first swarm of bees from a friend. When Julian needs a break, he watches the bees going about their day, flying in and out of their hive. “It’s pure mindfulness”, he says.

 

During lockdown, he suggested hosting a virtual beekeeping session as a team event.

 

“That’s when I was asked to be part of the Salesforce Adventurers Club.” Julian remembers, “That’s just the kind of thing I came to expect of Salesforce: We can’t have an actual bring your kids to work day? No problem, let’s take it online and make it bigger and better.”

 

Julian invited our young adventurers to a virtual bee inspection live from his farm in Clipston. “The first session went really well. For the second session, however, we couldn’t find the queen,“ Julian remembers. Still, the sessions were a great success. ”I loved being part of this, and I would join again next year if they’d have me.“

 

“Simply giving kids the tools for creativity can unlock a lot of doors”

Melissa Chan, a Product Manager for Quip located in San Francisco, still remembers the bring your kids to work days at her Dad’s workplace.

 

“One of my special childhood memories is visiting to my Dad’s work to learn more about what he did, so I got really excited when I heard about Salesforce Adventurers Club. I was amazed how the organizers were able to pull it off. They assembled so many volunteers and developed this program in record time.”

 

At the beginning of lockdown Melissa started thinking about new ways to teach her three kids from home and keep them entertained.“I always loved doing experiments, kids love candy, and I was inspired by candy experiments I’d read about.”

 

She started a YouTube Channel to share videos of those candy experiments and other tutorials for kids with her son’s friends from school. Melissa recalls: “I had tried most of the experiments before our Adventurers Club session, except for the mentos and coke experiment – it was a great surprise for everyone!

 

”As a product manager, Melissa loves the intersection of creativity and technology. “I wanted to provide creative resources to kids. Simply giving kids the tools for creativity can unlock a lot of doors.”

 

The Salesforce Adventurers Club was a fantastic experience and showed us that it is possible to keep connected and have fun together in a virtual world. This year presented us with many unforeseen challenges and changes to our everyday life and to the way we work. We keep on innovating and looking for new ways to support our employees and to create an amazing workplace experience for all.