Paramount Global Leverages Groundbreaking Use of the Salesforce Platform to Measure Diversity Across Productions
The innovative reporting platform is designed to help increase representation by analyzing gender, race and ethnic diversity metrics across television productions
NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2023 -- Today, Paramount Global and Salesforce, the global leader in CRM,
announced the launch of Paramount's new diversity reporting platform, which will give the company a more holistic view of the makeup of its production workforce, including Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, BET, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and others.
"To produce the best content for a diverse global audience, it's imperative that the teams both in front of and behind the camera and those who are creating content, reflect our audiences. We often say, 'what gets measured gets done,' and this data will help us create a baseline for diversity targets, continue to improve representation, make informed long-term diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments in a measurable way, and hold ourselves accountable," said Bob Bakish, President and CEO, Paramount Global.
"While there is no finish line when it comes to equality, every company can make progress in creating a more diverse and inclusive workforce and ecosystem by seeing and acting on their data," said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce. "We're incredibly excited to support Bob Bakish and his amazing team on their creation of a new software platform that advances equality across Paramount and the entertainment industry."
Paramount has been
publishing diversity data of its full-time U.S. employees for some time. And while there have been efforts to track diversity across domestic primetime productions because there was no uniform method of obtaining access to production suppliers' diversity statistics, the process of standardizing, consolidating, and understanding the data from these various sources was challenging and time intensive.
The use of Salesforce's platform represents the next step in Paramount's efforts to measure diversity within its production suppliers, which include writers, directors, vendors, contractors, and roles like wardrobe stylists, production assistants, makeup artists, stunt workers, and extras.
To address this challenge, Paramount created a new reporting platform that offers a single dashboard to display diversity statistics of its production suppliers across brands with an eye towards safeguarding the privacy and security of the information. This dashboard and overall framework are designed so that other media organizations and industries can adopt them at their discretion. The platform will also further its
Content for Change initiative, which is focused on using data-driven insights to transform its creative ecosystem – from content and creative supply chain to culture.
Paramount's Human Resources organization, technology and social impact teams, and Office of Global Inclusion collaborated for several months to plan their framework and created the platform using Salesforce's low-code developer tools in just four weeks. Having already reduced the process of calculating and visualizing metrics from at least two days of manual work to seconds, Paramount is also planning to further automate parts of the reporting process using features including
Salesforce Flow. Today, it's the responsibility of the industry to leverage workforce diversity information as a basis for taking meaningful action. The new diversity reporting platform is fundamental to building a data-driven culture within Paramount and driving systemic change across the industry.
About Paramount:
Paramount Global (NASDAQ: PARA, PARAA) is a leading global media and entertainment company that creates premium content and experiences for audiences worldwide. Driven by iconic studios, networks and streaming services, Paramount's portfolio of consumer brands includes CBS, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, Pluto TV and Simon & Schuster, among others. Paramount delivers the largest share of the U.S. television audience and boasts one of the industry's most important and extensive libraries of TV and film titles. In addition to offering innovative streaming services and digital video products, the company provides powerful capabilities in production, distribution, and advertising solutions. For more information about Paramount, please visit
www.paramount.com and follow @ParamountCo on social platforms.
About Content for Change:
Paramount's Content for Change is a global company-wide, cross-brand initiative that seeks to harness the power of content to counteract racism, bias, stereotypes, and all forms of hate. Informed and inspired by BET's groundbreaking campaign, Content for Change applies scientific research, rigor, and data to transform the entire creative ecosystem across three pillars – the content the company produces, the creative supply chain that powers it, and the culture that underpins everything Paramount does. For more information, go to
www.contentforchange.paramount.com
About Salesforce:
Salesforce empowers companies of every size and industry to connect with their customers in a whole new way with the power of AI, data and CRM. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit:
www.salesforce.com.
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For the past six months the company has been testing the tool — which is currently dubbed the Paramount Production Diversity Measurement Infrastructure — on some of its TV projects. In the first phase, the company asked for opt in data on race and gender, but it will explore measuring other factors. Paramount plans to roll out the tool for all of its domestic television productions.
“We know that media plays a pivotal role in shaping and driving values, perceptions, and actions — of individuals and within communities,” Crystal Barnes, Senior Vice President (SVP) of corporate social responsibility and ESG strategy and reporting, told
The Hollywood Reporter. “Content for Change’s mission is to transform the way the world sees people. We recognized the need for diversity across the industry and have key insights through our partners that prove that the more diverse the profiles are of those helping to create content, the more accurate the portrayals across this content will be. By using scientific research and insights, like those that are in our Salesforce production tool, we will be able to continue the work towards systemic change and a clear path to measure this process.”
Because the company was an established Salesforce client, developing a tool using its framework was speedier than building something similar from scratch. Paramount also plans to implement automation features in the future, including Salesforce Flow.
“While there is no finish line when it comes to equality, every company can make progress in creating a more diverse and inclusive workforce and ecosystem by seeing and acting on their data,” says Salesforce Chair and CEO Marc Benioff. “We’re incredibly excited to support Bob Bakish and his amazing team of their creation of a new software platform that advances equality across Paramount and the entertainment industry.”
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