We believe in the power of building a diverse, equitable and inclusive work environment where all employees feel heard and valued, have equal opportunities to grow and are empowered to share and implement their ideas for making our company better. We know that embracing different experiences and points of view leads to increased innovation, better decision-making and, ultimately, a much stronger company. It is also just the right thing to do — for our people and the communities where we work.

OUR INCLUSION STORY

At Weyerhaeuser, our values are sacred and have been deeply embedded in our culture over many decades, so we don’t change them without careful consideration. In 2019, we added inclusion to our list of core company values because we understand that to help drive innovation and continue to attract and retain employees from an increasingly diverse pool of talent, we need to make it clear that our commitment to building a truly inclusive workplace is unwavering and will not be compromised, just as it is for safety, integrity, citizenship and sustainability.

The decision to make inclusion a core value was just one step forward. To help us better understand our strengths and gaps, we then formed an Inclusion Council comprising 25 employees from all corners, demographics, and levels of the company. This council convenes regularly to discuss ways we can improve our inclusive culture at Weyerhaeuser and then helps us take action.

Logo listing that 84% of our employees agree that their work environment is inclusive.
Logo directing users to read our Inclusion Blog.
Logo that says "Our training offerings include inclusive leadership, mitigating bias and psychological safety.

OUR COMMITMENT TO ACTION

With input from our Inclusion Council, we identified three areas of focus for improvement: leaders, people, and culture. In each category we set annual goals; some are evergreen areas of focus that we work on every year and others are specific improvement activities we identify to drive progress.

To gauge the effectiveness of our work, we conduct employee surveys and monitor other data and feedback, and then determine which activities we should continue, stop, or modify, and which new activities we should begin to drive continued progress.

Below are some examples of the work we do in each category of focus. We are proud of the progress we’ve made, and at the same time we know there is much more work to do. To achieve sustainable momentum, we’re committed to ongoing effort, learning, reflection and accountability.

LEADERS

Our goal is to grow leaders at all levels of the company who are skilled at building inclusive teams; know how to spot and address inequities; put the effort in to mitigate bias; and maximize the value of diverse ideas and perspectives.

Examples of what we do to support this goal:

  • Data & Progress: We regularly share data metrics and progress against our inclusion goals with our senior management team, top leadership team, and board of directors.
  • Ownership: Our top leadership teams annually identify actions they will take in their own organizations to promote inclusive behaviors, mitigate bias, and create psychologically safe and innovative work environments.
  • Training: We offer training on diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, implicit and cognitive biases, and psychological safety to our leaders in online, virtual and classroom settings.
  • Resources: Our director of diversity, equity and inclusion regularly visits teams in our operations to engage in inclusion conversations. We also equip leaders with an online toolkit they can use to engage their own teams on these topics.
  • External Input: We periodically engage external experts to review our policies, programs and practices to ensure we are following best practices and focused on high-impact activities.

PEOPLE

We want all our people to feel empowered to develop, grow, share ideas, and innovate, without encountering unfair barriers to their success.

Examples of what we do to support this goal:

  • Anti-discrimination: We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind in our workplace. We have anti-discrimination, anti-harassment and equal-employment opportunity policies in place, and we deploy regular employee training on these policies to ensure understanding and compliance. We also conduct periodic reviews of these policies to ensure we are making improvements when needed.
  • People Decisions: When hiring, promoting and terminating employees, we use consistent processes to ensure all decisions are based on clear competencies and performance criteria. In making these decisions, we do not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, genetics, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristics protected under law.
  • Training & Development: All employees have access to our online training catalog, and all leaders are equally eligible to participate in our front-line and mid-level leadership development programs. We monitor participation in these programs to ensure representation reflects the demographics of eligible leaders in the company. We also offer mentoring opportunities to all employees.
  • Recruiting & Hiring: As an equal opportunity employer, we make hiring decisions that are fair, strictly based on qualifications, and free of discrimination of any type. Our job posting policy requires all nonexecutive roles to be posted for a minimum of five days to ensure all qualified internal candidates have an opportunity to apply. For external postings, we partner with DirectEmployers Association to ensure our roles appear on a wide range of job boards that attract diverse talent. To mitigate bias in the hiring process, we mask names on resumes, and encourage and measure the diversity of our hiring panels.
  • Pay Equity: We periodically conduct pay equity reviews.
  • Relief Fund:  We partner with a third-party nonprofit to offer an emergency relief fund to our employees that helps those who suffer from financial hardship caused by events such as hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, floods, military deployments and domestic violence. The fund covers the cost of basic human needs for employees who cannot afford access to these necessities in an emergency.

CULTURE

We strive to build a culture where all our people are equipped with the information, tools, training and inspiration they need to create and sustain an inclusive workplace.

Examples of what we do to support this goal:

  • ERGs: We support eight employee resource groups (led by employees) that focus on building strong networks, promoting awareness and learning, and supporting career development and recruiting efforts. All our ERGs are open and welcoming to all employees who want to participate in the events they organize.
  • Inclusion Blog: Our internal inclusion blog, penned by our chief administration officer, focuses on informing, educating, inspiring and connecting the dots for employees on how inclusion matters in everything we do. These posts are publicly available on our external blog, starting with the first entry from February 2020.
  • Awareness & Education: We share testimonial stories from employees with different backgrounds on our internal news channels throughout the year, and we offer a voluntary way to engage in a daily dose of training, inspiration, and education for employees who are interested in expanding their perspectives.
  • Training: Our voluntary online training catalog is accessible to all employees and includes 100+ different micro-learning options on a wide variety of soft skills, leadership development areas, business fundamentals, and DEI topics.
  • Feedback: Every year we conduct a companywide employee feedback survey to assess the health of our workplace culture. We include distinct questions about inclusion and review our results across demographics to identify strengths and gaps.
  • Philanthropy: Our company giving activities are led by passionate employees who sit on advisory committees that decide how best to support important causes in the communities where we operate. Our DE&I advisory committee helps us to determine which organizations we should support on an annual basis.
Logo that says we have four women on our board of directors and one person of color; two of our three key board committees are chaired by women, and 33% of our top leadership team (SVPs and VPs) are women.

OUR PROGRESS SO FAR

We are proud of the progress we have made over the past five years, particularly with increased representation of people of color in mid-level management roles, and with much higher representation of women in executive roles. We’ve also seen promising improvement in how all our employees across demographics feel about our inclusive culture based on the survey questions we ask each year, and we’ve seen tremendous and growing engagement with our revitalized employee resource groups across the company, which are open to everyone. These are promising improvements.

That said, we know there is a lot of work still left to do, and we’re committed to making continued progress. For us, that begins with the basic understanding that diversity is a fact; it describes the richness of difference in perspective and experience among the people who work in our operations and live in our communities. Inclusion is a choice; it describes the behaviors we engage in every day to make sure every person is recognized, heard, and valued. Equity is a process; it asks us to examine our policies and practices to eliminate unfair barriers and ensure truly equal opportunity. And belonging is a result; it describes the feeling people have when they feel safe and welcomed to bring their whole selves to work so they can fully contribute and grow without fear of judgment and exclusion.

We know sustainable change does not happen overnight, and that it takes dedicated time and resources to drive that change. We have plenty of work ahead of us, and we’re confident we’re on the right path forward.