Creating Equality: Adobe First Corporate Brand Certified by The 3% Movement

Creativity is at the heart of Adobe’s business and our brand. We usually talk about the creative community as our customers, but our own in-house creative team is one of our most valuable assets. They’re the people behind our gorgeous designs and standout advertising, from Adobe.com to events like this week’s Adobe MAX.

Today at The 3% Conference, Adobe is being honored as the first corporate brand certified by The 3% Movement for making meaningful strides towards gender equality. Historically, The 3% Movement has examined entire creative agencies for their practices across female leadership, workplace culture and equal creative opportunity. It was new territory for both of our organizations to look at one department within a larger company – in our case, the groups we call the Studio and Media teams in our Global Marketing Organization. The assessment included our employee demographic mix by level, employee benefits and programs, an anonymous survey of the entire team about their experiences at Adobe, and one-on-one in-depth interviews.

Findings

The assessment revealed strong scores in diversity and inclusion for these in-house creative teams. Across men and women, we had high levels of satisfaction with our employee programs and benefits, work/life integration, high net promoter scores, and a strong sense of pride in individuals’ work and creative outputs. Our practices, metrics and survey feedback combined resulted in a score of 91% and successful certification.

There are opportunities for us to improve as well. The assessment showed that we need to heighten transparency around the process for advancement – something we are working to improve through our opportunity parity initiative. We also have the opportunity to provide more visibility and recognition of creative work, and more meaningful development conversations between employees and their managers.

Driving change across the industry

At Adobe, we believe that when people feel appreciated and included, they can be more creative, innovative, and successful. Our Adobe For All strategy includes a commitment to sharing best practices to move the industry forward, including the customers we serve. We hope this pioneering work with The 3% Movement will inspire other brands, regardless of industry, to examine the experience of their in-house creative teams and drive toward an environment where everyone, regardless of gender, feels they can succeed.

Program investments are an important part of supporting employees, such as pay parity, benefits for families and LGBTQ+ employees, community-building opportunities, and generous time off programs to recharge. But another equally meaningful element is the day-to-day way that team members interact with one another.

We have developed five everyday behaviors we call Adobe For All In Action to ensure that everyone can be their best selves at work. These are especially important and relevant for creative teams, given the highly collaborative work they do. These five actions include:

I would like to extend a huge “thank you” to The 3% Movement for its innovative leadership in driving toward gender equality in the creative industry. We value our partnership.

I would also like to thank our Studio and Media teams for being brave enough to undertake this examination of their own culture, staffing and day-to-day practices. It can be a leap of faith to do this when you don’t know what you will find. No organization is perfect, but having a team that is open to feedback and committed to improvement in gender equality makes an enormous difference for our employees. Achieving this certification on the first try is an impressive achievement. Congratulations!

#AdobeForAll