Social

Redefining how we co-exist

We are redefining social impact by investing in our people and working toward a vision of equity and inclusion within Citrix.

Our investment in human capital

The ability to support and nurture the employee experience was tested during the past year like never before. Investing in, engaging with, and ensuring the safety of our employees throughout this tumultuous time was critical. And in return, Citrites invested in us, by looking at the obstacles we faced as a community and business, and finding innovative, creative ways to address them.

In 2020, we leveraged our own technology solutions to enable our global workforce to move quickly to a hybrid work model and have the ability to work from anywhere. While we were apart for much of the year, our products made it possible to work together. We worked hard to keep our teams supported, motivated, connected, and collaborative during a time when many of us felt more isolated than ever.

We’re on a journey to keep improving our employee experience, focusing on our culture, and physical and digital space.

Donna Kimmel
Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer

We help our people do more, by fostering a healthier, more livable work culture inside Citrix. We’re redesigning our workspaces and redefining how we work to improve employee experience, increase productivity, and optimize our entire business.

We provide employees with choices that best fit their unique work styles, needs, and circumstances—from where and how they work to how they choose to give back to their communities. These choices come as a result of listening to and engaging our employees on a regular basis, through surveys, internal communication channels, and other feedback mechanisms. This is one of the many reasons why Citrix continues to be named a great place to work.

59
%

of employees at a typical U.S.-based company say their company is a great place to work1

86
%

of our employees say Citrix is a great place to work1

Great Place to Work

The pandemic proved to us that caring for the “whole” employee is key to improving productivity, innovation, and engagement.

In 2020, our values of Integrity, Respect, Curiosity, Courage, and Unity tested our agility through a crisis. The pandemic proved to us that caring for the “whole” employee—professionally, physically, mentally, and emotionally—is key to improving productivity, innovation, and engagement. This past year taught us that digital wellness is critical to supporting both a healthy workforce and business. For instance, a recent Quartz study of employees around the world found that 92 percent of respondents who reported having access to “good” tech at work also reported that they have good productivity.

Employee health, safety and well-being

Throughout the pandemic, our Human Resources (HR) team went to great lengths to ensure the health, safety and well-being of our employees and their families. Like many workforces, Citrix had to transition to a distributed location work model. HR provided our employees with a variety of tools, resources, and training opportunities to enable effective off-premise work and help employees feel safe and supported during this stressful and unprecedented time.

Space to succeed

We believe that our commitment to employee well-being unlocks employee potential. In 2020, we focused on advancing well-being initiatives to give employees the “space to succeed” by helping them take control of their workday and, in turn, their personal and professional progress.

To counter the anxiety and depression that many employees experienced due to the pandemic, we have integrated capabilities within our Citrix Workspace product that help employees better manage the pressures and complexities of the workday, so they can be and do their best. For example, Citrix Workspace helped us deliver a secure, reliable, and consistent experience that removes the noise and distractions from work, enabling employees to focus, innovate, and create value. Our employees experienced these benefits and helped us to further improve upon these solutions for our customers.

Throughout the pandemic, we found creative and effective ways to support employees physically, emotionally, and financially—and discovered that happy, satisfied employees make for productive employees. And when circumstances compelled us to make changes to employee health and safety policies and protocols, we kept employees in the loop through consistent communication from management and leadership.

Citrix has been extremely supportive throughout the COVID-19 situation. I’m very impressed and proud of how Citrix has communicated policies and sought employee feedback before implementing anything new.

Employee Resilience Questionnaire Response

Throughout the year, we kept a pulse on employees’ shifting needs and concerns through our resilience questionnaire. The feedback we gathered helped us continually refine our human capital management strategy in response to changes in the outside world.

Putting safety first

In the middle of the pandemic, we were proud that our procurement team was able to quickly secure personal protective equipment (PPE) to help ensure our essential employees who needed to be on-premise in our offices and facilities were safe. We kept our finger on the pulse of how COVID-19 was impacting our workforces in various regions in different ways. For example, when the situation in India worsened, we made sure we could locate suppliers who could provide us with oxygen concentrators and other equipment to support our on-site employees at our India facility as effectively as possible.

Looking ahead, we’re also committed to the highest level of health and safety in our workplaces to protect employees as facilities reopen. Our Real Estate and Facilities (REFS) experts are methodically reopening sites while piloting new ways of working that adhere to relevant safety guidelines. For instance, these enhanced procedures cover what to do if an employee or someone they know tests positive for COVID-19 after being in the office, the cleaning protocols for the office and guidance on social distancing and moving things on shared desks in the safest way possible.

To ensure employee and community safety in anticipation of returning to on-premise work, we also developed a COVID-19 Self Certification microapp in Citrix Workspace to offer a global solution for Citrites in regions deemed safe enough to return to offices. The app provides our workforce with  a daily reminder to assess their health and other risk factors to make sure they don’t put their colleagues at risk.

Going forward, we intend to build on the powerful foundation we have constructed with a focus on mental health, sustainable work/life balance scenarios, and vaccine logistics and support.

Building on benefits

We continued to be a leader in offering best-in-class benefits including paternity leave, childcare, matching 401K employee contributions as well as choices in flexible work schedules, workspaces and locations, and more. During the pandemic, we also enhanced employee benefits to ensure employees were getting the support they needed while working outside the office. That included a $1,000 payment to each employee regardless of their position, and $500 to new hires—to set up work-from-home or off-premise spaces. Employees had the choice to use this money in whatever way they saw fit to create a work environment that best suited their work style and individual circumstances.

$
1000

payment to each employee regardless of their position—to set up work-from-home or off-premises spaces

$
500

payment to new hires—to set up work-from-home or off-premises spaces

Redefining the future of work

Citrix is committed to creating positive employee experiences for our customers and our employees. We continue to experiment with our technology solutions and pilot new ways to work. Employee experience—which includes everything from company culture and work environment to workplace technology—matters because it directly impacts how committed employees are to moving the business forward. When we take care of our employees, they’re more empowered to take care of our customers, which in turn helps us to innovate, gain a competitive advantage, and ultimately, drive long-term value for our stakeholders.

We recognize the positive ripple effects of the hybrid work model. Our solutions help people to do their best work by providing them with flexibility in how and where they work. We know from looking at the impacts on our own workforce, that this flexibility nurtures more sustainable lifestyles and helps people feel more fulfilled professionally and personally, by allowing more time for personal pursuits, community involvement, and well-being.

In 2020, we launched a Citrix Remote Works web page and podcast aimed at helping those inside and outside of Citrix adapt to and learn how to manage working off-premise from a variety of perspectives.

For those Citrites returning to the office, they will enjoy the benefits of our Flex Seating program. The goal is to maximize flexibility and increase autonomy so that employees can work where and when they feel most inspired and comfortable.

Expected benefits include:

Choice of preferred location, ergonomics, and workstation setup

Freedom to come any day of the week versus assigned days

Ability to book seats near team members, project partners, and/or specific rooms

Clutter-free rooms with clear and easily cleaned surfaces

Talent recruitment, development, and retention

Citrix continues to be considered a great place to work due to our commitment to work flexibility, quality benefits, professional development, and fostering a culture of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Attracting top talent

In 2020, despite the pandemic, we not only continued to attract quality candidates, but we were also able to fill positions even faster. Almost overnight, we transitioned to 100 percent virtual interviews to ensure the safety of our employees and candidates.

Our virtual interview approach received positive feedback from applicants and helped us improve candidate experience, as they did not have to take time off work to drive to an office to interview. As a result, we streamlined our interview process and now have access to a wider candidate pool because we can interview prospective talent anywhere in the world.

Our HR team swiftly identified and implemented tools and processes to enable virtual employee onboarding without compromising employee experience. We introduced a Virtual Candidate Engagement model to build confidence with candidates who accepted job offers. Hiring managers, recruiters, and HR business partners actively communicated with these candidates and shared next steps. The tool then successfully onboarded new hires and created a positive first impression of Citrix, creating a seamless experience for trainers and participants. New hires commented that the process was easy and productive.

Building a diverse pipeline

We believe that technology can also play a big role in improving diversity in the workplace. That’s why Citrix is exploring data-driven technologies that help to make our talent recruitment and interview processes more equitable by identifying and mitigating biases. For instance, we’re using Textio, a tool that helps take bias out of job descriptions or job postings while conveying the inclusiveness of a company culture.

In 2020, we’ve invested in a leadership training and internship program called INROADS, an organization we’ve been working with to promote racial equity. INROADS helps businesses gain greater access to diverse talent through continuous leadership development of outstanding ethnically diverse students and placement of those students in internships.

Our $150,000 donation is enabling up to 10 Citrix interns to participate in scholarships and leadership development training—while providing us with a diverse talent pipeline. In addition, we recently launched a scholarship program with the United Negro College Fund aimed at providing scholarships to 50 deserving students throughout the U.S.

Training a “future-ready” workforce

At Citrix, we’re building a future-ready workforce designed to equip employees with leadership skills for tomorrow’s work environment. Our core leadership competencies are used to identify, develop, and nurture our emerging leaders and to prepare them for the future. In 2020, we designed and implemented a leadership program for our vice presidents called Transformative Business Leader, which focuses on a business simulation and leadership skills needed for the future.

By year’s end, we had transitioned all in-person trainings to virtual, allowing for a broader spectrum of global employees to participate in more trainings than in previous years. 

Employee engagement

At Citrix, we’ve learned that keeping our focus on human capital drives employee engagement. We are a certified Great Place to Work for four years running and a Great Places to Work Fortune Top 100 company. Our engagement level is among the top in our industry and continued to improve in 2020.

According to Citrix’s 2020 Global Employee Survey, our Engagement Index Score was 81% favorable.

According to Gallup’s 2020 employee engagement survey, U.S. employee engagement rose to 39 percent. Based on Citrix’s 2020 Global Employee Survey, our internal Engagement Index Score was 81 percent. We benchmark ourselves against the top quartile of technology companies (Tech Top 25 percent benchmark), and we scored two points higher than that benchmark. This survey also revealed that 91 percent of our employees would recommend Citrix as a great place to work. Citrix employees choose to stay with us for the long haul, with a 2020 voluntary attrition rate of 7.8 percent.

As we look forward, our human capital management priorities are to be a magnet for performance-driven, diverse talent; build future-ready capabilities; and augment business results.

Our commitment to workplace equity

For us to reach our goal of serving 1 billion people, we know we must build a workforce that represents all people. The social justice crises of 2020 further inspired us to sharply enhance our approach to social equity at Citrix.

We remain committed to participating in the workplace equity conversation, actively listening, and above all, driving solutions toward a more equitable and just work culture. This requires not only making commitments, but putting actions behind our words, including:

Making Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIB) one of several ESG performance metrics being linked to executive compensation

Launching a Racial Equity strategy

Expanding our Daring Dialogue learning series

Creating DIB content for our internal Citrix Learning Center

Developing a Veterans hiring strategy

Engaging a third-party Disability Accessibility Consultant to conduct an organization-wide audit

Adding self-ID for sexual orientation and gender identity into Workday

Diversity, inclusion and belonging

We’re redefining what diversity, inclusion and belonging mean at Citrix by fostering an expansive view of diversity that includes people of different experiences, locations, ages, social and ethnic backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, and physical and mental abilities.

Our teams span multiple generations, speak 35+ languages, and operate in 40+ countries.

At Citrix, our DIB strategy is built on four pillars that empower us to contribute as ourselves to drive the future of work.

Develop diversity

Reach new candidate sources and support employee growth

Grow inclusive leaders and teams

Develop all Citrix employees to practice inclusion as the way we work

Mitigate unconscious bias

Remove the unconscious barriers to attract, develop, and retain the best talent across background and identity

Mobilize our employees

Harness the passion in our workforce to experiment and to learn and grow together

To help employees promote a more inclusive work environment and learn which factors foster diversity in the workplace, we purchased a virtual learning tool in 2020 and plan to launch our new DIB learning program I AM Citrix in fall 2021.

Seeing a need to increase Black representation and career pathing within Citrix, in 2020 we made several commitments:

Increase Black employee representation within Citrix

Expanded our recruiting at Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) and organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) and AfroTech, and engaged sourcing agencies specifically focused on Black and African American candidates.

Improve our career pathing and leadership development of Black employees

Invested in a mentoring program for our Black professionals. Eight employees are part of the initial one-year pilot, which enables them to engage with external mentors that are at the C-suite or executive level.

Commit to having a racially diverse candidate pool for all executive and Board of Director searches

In 2020, we appointed a racially diverse candidate to the Board of Directors and were able to expand the diversity of our candidate pool overall.

Detailed workforce diversity data is available in the Data Index section of this report.

Employee Resource Groups

One of the ways we celebrate diversity and build a more inclusive culture of belonging is through our employee resource groups (ERGs), which support underrepresented groups of employees and build “safe spaces” for members, educate allies, and helps us attract and retain talent.

In 2020, as the majority of our workforce was working in distributed locations, providing that space for employees to connect virtually and engage one another made our ERGs more critical than ever. Not only did they provide room for timely discussions around pressing social justice issues, but they also allowed employees to feel a part of a community during an increasingly isolated, challenging time.

Central to our DIB efforts, our ERGs empower employees in career development, mentoring, advocacy, and networking.

10

ERGs with 29 chapters in nine offices

3000

Citrites engaged in ERGs and their events in 2020

In 2020, we identified executive leadership team champions and executive vice president sponsors for each ERG. We also established four new ERGs in 2020, including:

Citrix Asian Professionals (CAP)

Supports employees of Asian and Pacific Islander descent and their allies in building a cultural and professional safe space.

Citrix Enabled

Promotes the awareness of diverse-abilities, including physical disabilities, neurodiversity, and mental health in the workplace while also offering support for employees and their loved ones.

Citrix Emerge

Engages, supports, and inspires the next generation of Citrites by building a cross-functional community of those emerging in their careers or a new role.

Citrix Parents & Caregivers

Offers support, shared experiences and resources on family responsibility issues, whether caring for an elder partner or expecting a child. CPC was especially important in 2020, when many faced family-related challenges related to COVID-19.

Our other ERGs include:

Citrix Black Professionals Network (BPN)

Women’s Inspirational Network (WIN)

Citrix Pride Alliance (CPA)

Citrix Latino Professionals (LPG)

Citrix Foster Family & Adoption

Military Veterans

BPN and CAP ERGs join in solidarity

As anti-Asian attacks reached a tipping point earlier this year, our CAP members had a lot to process. In having discussions among members and allies, they realized this important topic should be addressed during a broader forum. Understanding the task at hand, BPN jumped in to provide support by exploring options for sharing thoughts and personal experiences while also providing a learning experience for Citrix employees. Having the support and partnership with BPN was critical to the CAP community in their time of need. With the additional support of leadership, CAP hosted a Citrix-wide event called “Asian Americans Amplified.”

The panel discussion shed light on the difficult experiences of our Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Citrites. Realizing the commonalities between the Black and AAPI experience, BPN and CAP also coordinated a safe-space discussion covering sensitive topics such as stereotypes, moments of solidarity and tension amongst both groups, and how to be effective allies going forward. While there is still educating to do, both BPN and CAP are unified in providing a supportive space for its members and allies.

Racial equity

The racial justice crisis reached an inflection point in 2020 and remains ongoing and as urgent as ever. It highlighted why increased dialogue and action is critical. Though these conversations are difficult, they are necessary, and our leadership is committed to making all Citrites feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard.

Both leadership and employees were moved to action, driving many of our DIB events and initiatives to be geared toward promoting racial equity within Citrix. This included increased collaborations between our executives and leaders within HR, DIB and BPN to reflect on how we might advance our racial equity efforts.

In response, Citrix established a racial equity strategy to drive internal, personal, and systemic change across the organization. This strategy is based on three pillars of work:

Internal — modifying our processes and programs to prevent bias, attract, develop, retain, and reward people to promote racial equity and sharing aggregate data and progress freely.

We launched a 30-person Racial Equity Working Group and adopted an unbiased language lexicon.

Personal — committing to our own learning journey to become an organization where we all belong.

In 2021 and beyond, we plan to establish new evidence-based inclusion and anti-racism training for Citrites.

Systemic — using our influence to support Black communities and impact changes in the tech industry.

In 2020, we made significant investments in a comprehensive Racial Equity and Social Justice Program, including $250,000 in scholarships and internships, $300,000 in grants to narrow the digital divide, and $75,000 to our localized adopt-a-school programs for minority at-risk students.

Daring Dialogues series

Our leadership embraces a culture of vulnerability, encouraging employees to ask uncomfortable questions that help to uncover opportunities to improve our DIB approach. Engaging in difficult conversations and openly addressing issues of bias, discrimination, and harassment is critical to employees better understanding allyship and advocacy.

To that end, we started a company-wide discussion series entitled “Daring Dialogues” in June 2020. Since the series launched, we've hosted more than 5,300 employees. The series allows space for active listening and learning across the organization. While historically the series has focused on racial and social equity, in 2021 it evolved to incorporate conversations on other challenging topics, such as religion, well-being, mental health, and accessibility for employees and customers with disabilities.

Looking ahead

Employees are often the catalyst behind many of our efforts to address biases and increase racial equity. That speaks to the culture we’ve been working to build—where employees feel empowered to come forward with ideas for how to make Citrix a better place to work for all. We will continue to welcome these ideas moving forward. In 2021, we plan to introduce a new learning program called I AM Citrix, which is intended to elevate DIB throughout the company.

Supporting each other is part of what it means to be a Citrite, and in the ongoing fight for racial and social justice, our collective voices can help create positive change.

Pay equity

Providing equitable reward opportunities for all employees is a critical tenet of the core of Citrix’s compensation strategy. Pay equity is so important at Citrix that, beginning this year, part of our executive officers’ variable cash compensation plan includes pay equity objectives, among others. It’s one of our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics, and we have increased our focus on ESG initiatives, including our Diversity, Belonging, and Inclusion programs. Citrix is working to ensure there is no gap in pay for women and under represented minorities within our company. We take a holistic approach to pay equity analysis that gives us a better understanding of how to drive systemic change in diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Proactively analyzing our talent and pay programs helps us achieve pay fairness and better serve our employees.

Supporting our communities

Citrix culture encourages employees to act as champions of change and take the initiative in supporting our communities. Employees’ grassroots involvement in improving the places in which they work and live is one way we are redefining what it means to be a good corporate citizen.

Employee volunteerism and giving

Employees have the opportunity to volunteer through our Citrix Serves program and make financial donations to causes of their choosing through our Citrix Gives program.

Citrix Serves

Designed to galvanize our global employees around powerful acts of community service. Employees receive 16 hours of paid volunteer time to support the charities of their choice. Due to the in-person constraints of the pandemic, only virtual volunteering was offered in 2020. Employees engaged in 30 meaningful global virtual initiatives and supported 134 nonprofits. Citrix employees responded by participating in a variety of innovative and inspiring activities. For instance, Citrites in Japan and Hong Kong built prosthetic hands for amputees in undeveloped countries through the Helping Hands program in partnership with Odyssey Teams.

Citrix Gives

Provides grant dollars to eligible nonprofits and supports personal employee donations through our charitable match program. Through the Dollars for Doers program, employees receive a cause card for volunteering during their personal time, which can be used to donate to their favorite nonprofit. Citrix matches donations up to $2,000 per employee per year to qualifying nonprofits.

COVID-19 relief and recovery efforts

Our relief and recovery program focused on helping children and families with basic needs like food, shelter, medical care, and educational support.

In 2020:

>
600
K

students and youth supported through digital learning and training

223
K

medical supplies provided, including masks and protective equipment

>
52
K

people offered health and human services, such as rental support and counseling

618
K

meals served

9
K

homeless individuals provided shelter

$
3
M

donated to COVID-19 relief and recovery

To further support COVID-19 relief and recovery efforts in 2020, we doubled matching donation amounts to $4,000 per employee. The top five nonprofits that benefitted from employee giving were the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Feeding America, Interfaith Food Shuttle, Second Harvest Food Bank/Food Bank of Central Eastern North Carolina, and United Way.

Citrix is in a position where we can help our communities, and we want to do just that. As such, we increased our annual corporate giving budget to $4.5 million. The increased funding supported over 1,000 global nonprofits, enabling us to give more substantial monetary donations to those most in need in the communities where we live and work as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. In lieu of end-of-year holiday parties, we donated $1.4 million to provide 13 million meals through partnerships with Feeding America, the Global Foodbanking Network, and the World Food Program.

Making products more accessible

Citrix is focused on efforts and partnerships to make products more accessible for those with disabilities. We engaged accessibility experts to help us develop a plan to improve the accessibility of our digital systems and services, including our mobile apps, websites, electronic documents, and product software.

The need for accessibility was made especially acute during the pandemic. So much of the working world went digital to not only conduct business, but to manage personal lives, from shopping and banking to education and healthcare. It’s important that Citrix, as a technology company with global reach and scale, address this issue to allow people with disabilities the same digital access as everyone. Moving forward, we will remain particularly focused on web, company-wide digital, online chat functions, and social media posting accessibility.

Expanding supplier diversity

Growing a diverse supply chain is not only part of our sustainability approach; it’s a business imperative that spurs innovation, encourages competition and reduces risk within our supply chain by increasing procurement channels. The inclusion of diverse suppliers in our supply chain also helps Citrix to better understand the needs of our customers and the communities we serve, while continuing to provide long-term benefits for our customers.

Our Supplier Diversity (SD) program promotes diversity and social inclusion among our supply base. The SD team is focused on identifying diverse businesses to engage, and measuring, monitoring and reporting that supplier diversity activity to our customers.

We maintain close relationships with our diverse suppliers, many of which are small family businesses. Throughout the pandemic, we prioritized, supported and engaged with these suppliers. We made it a point to ensure that smaller contractors were being paid, even if they were temporarily unable to supply us. Our SD team understood that these actions were not only critical to maintaining the future stability of our supply chain, but were also the right thing to do during a crisis that created great uncertainty for the livelihoods of many suppliers.

We exceeded our $30M diverse supplier spend goal for 2020 by $2M.

2020 SD engagement highlights include:

Interactive Supplier Diversity Fair

We virtually hosted our second annual Interactive Supplier Diversity Fair, with 24 diverse suppliers, five SD advocacy organizations and Citrites across multiple departments to discuss how diverse suppliers can gain business opportunities with Citrix or extend their existing relationship.

Tier 2 Pilot Program

We encourage key suppliers to increase SD in their own supplier base by asking them to report and measure their Tier 2 diversity spend to Citrix. 2020 results of this program were published in a November 2020 Supplier Diversity Briefing.

Launch of Citrix Supplier Diversity Vendor Management Tool

Using a data-centric approach, we launched ConnXus, a tool now embedded within our spend analytics tool, Sievo, which helps our Procurement team more readily track and use supplier data to inform purchasing decisions. ConnXus captures SD status, certification type and commodities provided, and suppliers can use the portal to keep their profiles up to date.

Corporate Diversity Council partnerships

Our council memberships support us in identifying diverse companies and allowing us access to vetted databases of certified diverse suppliers to potentially engage with.

Now that we have built a strong SD partnership base and established the tools to do the deep data dives, we are at the point where we can work to further expand our SD goals and spend looking forward.