Name: Gap CEO: An Inclusive Culture Is a Competitive Advantage
Uploaded: 2018-08-15
Duration: 5 min 35 s
Description: Art Peck says taking a strong stance on issues like equal pay is good for business.

Art, ever since Gap was founded almost fifty years ago, it's had a long history of standing up for equal rights and equal opportunities for everyone. It just seems like Gap is operating on some higher Mission, besides being a retailer, tell us why. I've only been in the company 13 or 14 years. But I inherited a culture of inclusiveness, a culture of diversity, and a culture of equality, which we believe is good for the business and obviously good for our employees and society as well. And a lot of this has been dictated by the two founders of Gap, Don and Doris Fisher. Who had very strong core values, tell us about that. It's the rare company that was founded by a couple. And founded by a couple on very equal terms. They had a very, and I've talked to Doris about this, a very mercenary perspective in a good way, on the values of the company. Which was, they believed it was a competitive advantage to have an environment that was inclusive, diverse, and equal. Regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, or race. And I think one thing that a lot of people don't know about GAP is that it is a leader in gender equality. Women make up 70 % of the workforce globally. And when it comes to salaries, this is the fascinating part, men and women get equal pay. Is that because. Gaps co- founder, Doris Fisher, is a big believer in female leadership or is it something else? It's a very simple pragmatic stance that the company took, which was they wanted to attract, they were building a new company back in 1969, they wanted to attract the best people into the company. And his door says if you want to attract the best person, it doesn't matter whether they're a man or a woman, whether they're straight or they're gay, or whatever, but of course you should pay them equally .>> We're seeing these days there are more business leaders and chief executives who are speaking up on social issues. Now this has been part of your DNA. Of a Gap all along. Do you still feel a little bit more urgency about speaking out on any kind of social and political problems, given the Gap history? Today I think it's important for me, both for our customers and I would underline that, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum. Because I don't view these issues as political, But for our customers and our employees to make it clear when there is an issue that is being discussed relative to our values that we take a strong stand. So what kinds of issues have you spoken out, can you give us an example? Sure, the immigration issue is certainly one. We benefit as a company From immigration, we have many DACA dreamers inside of the company, and that's been important for us. And then just really the whole issue of diversity inside the workforce and our diversity, again, is very rich. I say it's a very rich stew of people that we have in the company. And it's important for them to know that that's something we're gonna reinforce and continue to invest in and support for them. Mm- hm, what are areas that you don't speak out on? Or where do you draw the line? I obviously loathe the shootings that have taken place. We as a company loath those, we worry about safety in our stores every single day. Delta chose to take a stand obviously with respect to the NRA after the shootings happened. And we looked at that issue and I decided that was probably not an issue that we really had a particular issue to take a stand at the end of the day. We have a policy in our stores in open carry environments. But that's kind of a standard course of business at the end of the day and that's just one where I actually stared at it quite hard because it's, how could you not be disturbed as a human being when you see this happen but I didn't feel like we had license there to really take a stand on that issue. And I understand that GAP employees are also very socially active, how often do they e- mail you or See you in the hallway and tell you please would you say something on this. All the time, and I always- What do you do? I always answer them, and I always tell if I'm not going to respond to it and say something I explain to them why. And if we are going to respond to it, and I'm going to say something, I basically say standby, and then I ask for feedback after we've done something. So, as an example, when the terrible shootings took place in Florida in the night club, we wanted to be thoughtful and compassionate in our response to that. We obviously have people in that community who were impacted by it, etcetera. So I wanted to wait for a period of time before saying something. I got a lot of feedback On you need to say something, you need to jump in and I said, we will, give me a moment. And I did use my voice to talk about that. I'm sure you've been hearing what a lot of CEOs have been speaking out on various issues that we've just discussed here, taking a position whether it's Starbucks or Delta or Apple or Microsoft, you name it, what are you learning from them? And what do you feel compel to do more? In the first pick your shoots can raise to the [ UNKNOWN ] every time, the second thing is be quick and be [ UNKNOWN ] and be decisive I think we saw that on Starbuck response to the situation there if some of the corporative process is that you might have for. Media and crisis control and things like that. Those don't work in the same way anymore. So we've really refined our internal processes to be super- quick and super- responsive when something happens. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Gap CEO: An Inclusive Culture Is a Competitive Advantage

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Art Peck says taking a strong stance on issues like equal pay is good for business.