Published 06-18-24
Submitted by GoDaddy
Originally published in GoDaddy's 2023 Sustainability Report
Employee Experience
We’re fostering a culture of learning and engagement.
Everything we do rests upon GoDaddy’s incredible people who devote their time, talent, and energy to working here. That’s why we take a human-centered approach that focuses on individual needs. We facilitate the growth and success of our employees by creating an engaging and meaningful employee experience, providing career development opportunities, and offering competitive compensation and benefits. We continuously work to improve our talent management approach to better serve our employees and be an employer of choice.
Inclusive Recruitment
Our commitment to inclusion and equity starts at the beginning of a potential employee’s journey with us. We strive to attract diverse and talented candidates by showcasing our inclusive culture and principles to the world. We carry this through to different policies, benefits, products, resources, and other efforts that help create an inclusive environment for us and our customers. These include:
Performance Reviews
We value transparency in all areas of our company, and that extends to both feedback and introspection. Our performance review process includes formal mid-year and year-end reviews for employees with appropriate tenure. At these reviews, employees and managers discuss goal setting, career development, performance insights, and peer feedback. Employees can evaluate their own performance via self-evaluations. Through our annual GoDaddy Voice employee survey, we ask employees to share their feedback and their perspectives on their career development.
Our performance management processes are also designed to be fair and equitable. We implement company-wide processes to help reduce variance in performance assessments between groups with different genders, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, ages, and other factors. This involves ensuring that we assess both the work that people complete and how they complete it in alignment with our values. It also includes focusing on action and outcomes as opposed to style and personality to ensure consistency in feedback and providing equal evaluation time.
Promotion Parity
We partnered with Stanford University’s VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab to create company-wide processes that reduce variance in performance assessments between demographic groups.
As part of that effort, when we shared our first pay parity analysis in 2015, it showed that while women and men were paid at parity for similar roles, women weren’t advancing in all positions at the same rate as their male counterparts. This finding led us to create an ongoing process to proactively identify qualified employees who should be considered for promotion. This proactive promotion flagging process identifies potential eligible employees who could be reviewed for promotion, rather than relying on subjective criteria and identification. The initiative immediately impacted and continues to enable our ability to support the career advancement of all employees, while mitigating the potential effects of bias through the process.
Employee Engagement
GoDaddy is a global company with employees around the world. We operate a hybrid workplace model, with employees working both in offices and remotely. While this allows GoDaddy to best serve our diverse global customer base, it can create distance between teams. To narrow this distance, we strive to foster communication and collaboration among employees, create meaningful opportunities for engagement, and cultivate an inclusive community.
We do this through multiple employee engagement programs. The GoDaddy Fun Fund provides resources for employees to engage in important team building activities — either in-person or virtually. Everyday Champions is our global employee recognition program that connects our global workforce, allowing employees to recognize and celebrate each other’s successes, from going above and beyond at work to simply stepping in to lend a hand where needed. Employees can give recognition, and managers and people leaders can give points-based recognition to their coworkers. Recognized employees can redeem accrued points for items in our Everyday Champions catalog.
Employee Resource Groups
Even when we’re physically apart, we aim to bring together our employees working across different areas of the company and from different backgrounds. ERGs play a critical part in fostering our culture. They’re employee-led groups formed around common missions, identities, affinities, or interests. Each ERG is open to all employees, including allies and champions. ERGs provide a space for employees to develop relationships, support professional development (both for themselves and others), engage in corporate projects and programs, learn from each other, and have some fun. In addition to the personal benefits, ERGs help empower GoDaddy’s business priorities and goals across talent, learning, business, and community development.
In 2023, we continued to enhance employee engagement within ERGs and broaden their impact by developing new and refining existing procedures, processes, roles, and events.
Our 11 Global ERGs are:
Employee Feedback
Listening to our employees is a critical component of our talent management approach. Through GoDaddy Voice, our annual engagement survey, we learn firsthand from our employees what is working and where we need to improve. In 2023, 80% of our employees participated in the GoDaddy Voice survey, revealing insights such as:
To address employees’ feedback, we created action plans and aim to share periodic updates to increase transparency.
Learning and Development
Through our learning and development program, we aim to activate the exponential power of our people. We believe investing in our employees’ growth and skills not only benefits them but also contributes to the overall success of our company and our customers. Through our learning and development initiatives, we aim to achieve three goals:
Our learning experiences help our employees develop their skills, enhance their knowledge, and grow their careers. Some of these experiences include:
In 2023, we continued to hold quarterly career workshops and released career spotlight podcasts to showcase the career stories of our own employees.
Leadership Training
We recognize that strong leadership inspires strong teams. In addition to our learning experiences, we offer several pathways for leaders to develop their skills, including:
16 Hours: Employees spent an average of 16 hours on learning and development training in 2023.
We know everyone learns differently. GoDaddy believes conversation is a powerful learning tool to ignite change, help us learn more about each other, introduce new ways of thinking, and create a more inclusive environment. That’s why in 2023, we launched You Belong: A Speaker and Conversation Series. Through this series, we host both external and internal experts, thought leaders, and changemakers to discuss key topics such as DEIB, empathy, allyship, current events, and more. In 2023, we hosted conversations on critical topics including the importance of representation and equity in product design. Through this series, GoDaddy employees can expect fresh perspectives, thought-provoking discussions, and more opportunities to learn and grow.
In 2024, we continue our aim to empower employees, foster a culture of continuous learning, and provide opportunities for personal and professional growth. This includes evaluating the use of AI to facilitate opportunities to learn from each other and help identify what employees are seeking to create detailed, personalized development plans.
Awards and Honors
Benefits
Our employee total rewards include a range of comprehensive and competitive offerings that support our human-centered approach and allow us to attract and retain top talent. Our global employee assistance provider, Lyra Health/ICAS, provides various confidential support options, including virtual and in-person therapy, coaching, and unlimited access to self-care apps to help navigate difficult topics like stress, anxiety, depression, substance use, and relationship challenges.
In 2023, to improve our benefits offerings, we provided a new medical plan option, improved network for dental care, increased GoDaddy contributions to the employee Health Savings Account, increased basic life insurance coverage, and added a surrogacy reimbursement, among other efforts.
Additional benefits available in many of our locations include:
For more information on our employee benefits, please review our Careers page.
Employee Giving and Volunteerism
We inspire, enable, and encourage our employees to be a force for good through giving and volunteerism. All GoDaddy employees are eligible for 20 hours of paid time off annually to volunteer. On a first-come, firstserve basis, each GoDaddy employee can access up to $1,500 annually to match their donations to eligible nonprofit organizations and/or to reward eligible nonprofit organizations $35 per every hour the employee volunteers with the organization. Through this program lead by the Corporate Sustainability and ESG team, employees reported over 4,600 volunteer hours in 2023 alone.
GoDaddy Employees Volunteering in their Community
Since 2017, GoDaddy employees volunteered their time to participate in the U.S. Department of State’s TechWomen Program, aiming to empower, connect, and support women leaders in the STEM field. TechWomen provides participants access to networks, resources, and knowledge to empower them to reach their full potential. During the five-week program, emerging women leaders from Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East come together with GoDaddy employees at our U.S. offices for a projectbased mentorship and exchange program.
Fostering Inclusive Entrepreneurship Through GoDaddy Employees and Kiva
Since 2015, GoDaddy has partnered with Kiva, an international nonprofit with a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive through crowdfunding loans. This partnership reflects our drive to make entrepreneurship more inclusive for all. In 2023, employees supported this mission by having the opportunity to choose which eco-friendly entrepreneurs received GoDaddy funds in celebration of Earth Day and by supporting the entrepreneurs of their choosing during U.S. Small Business Month. Additionally, GoDaddy publicly matched loans up to four times the giving amount, supporting select U.S. communities where Empower by GoDaddy has had programming. With employee help, in 2023, GoDaddy disbursed $114,050 across 640 loans to small business owners.
Ambitions for 2024
We’ve come a long way in building an inclusive and equitable employee experience in the past decade, and we are incredibly proud of our achievements. We know, however, there isn’t a finish line and we’re committed to improving our performance on our ongoing journey. The more our people are empowered here at GoDaddy, the more we can empower entrepreneurs around the world to pursue and achieve their dreams.
To learn more, read our 2023 Sustainability Report.
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About this Report
The GoDaddy 2023 Sustainability Report details our progress toward our corporate sustainability goals, strategies, and initiatives in support of our overarching corporate mission and values. Unless otherwise noted, this report reflects our corporate sustainability performance across our global operations covering the fiscal year period from January 1 to December 31, 2023. To demonstrate our commitment to transparent communication regarding our sustainability progress, we routinely share updates through our website and our annual Sustainability Report. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback on this report by contacting ESG@GoDaddy.com.
This report references the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards and includes select Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) metrics for the Internet Media and Services sector. We also disclose our contributions and progress toward priority UN SDGs. For additional information on how we align with these frameworks and key indicators demonstrating our sustainability performance, please review the Frameworks and Metrics section.
GoDaddy is empowering everyday entrepreneurs around the world by providing all of the help and tools to succeed online. GoDaddy is the place people come to name their idea, build a professional website, attract customers, sell their products and services, and manage their work. Our mission is to give our customers the tools, insights and the people to transform their ideas and personal initiative into success. To learn more about the company, visit www.GoDaddy.com.
GoDaddy focuses on making opportunity more inclusive for all in the communities where we work, live and play across the globe. We rally behind inclusive entrepreneurship and other critical local needs that empower people to succeed through philanthropic and in-kind donations, volunteerism, strategic partnerships and advocacy.
Empower by GoDaddy is GoDaddy's global community and philanthropic program equipping entrepreneurs in underserved communities with training, tools and peer networks to accelerate their journeys. GoDaddy rallies behind entrepreneurs in underserved communities by building their confidence and skills to strengthen their small business’ digital presence. Entrepreneurs engage in customized learning experiences, work 1-1 with GoDaddy volunteer coaches and local mentors, and gain access to wrap-around services, in-kind products and networks boosting their small businesses success.
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