Celebrating Differences, Valuing Voices
Building a diverse workforce and an equitable and inclusive work culture is another important tenet to Chesapeake’s success. Our DEI vision is to cultivate an environment where everyone can feel included, accepted and empowered to thrive with an innovative mindset.
Diversity At-a-Glance
29%
women in workforce
22%
women in leadership positions
15%
ethnic minorities in workforce
6%
ethnic minorities in leadership positions
As of Dec. 31, 2022
Leadership Committed to DEI
Our Board and executive leadership team are committed to cultivating a workplace where employees feel safe to discuss their differences, respected for their diverse perspectives and supported by our DEI efforts. These senior leaders are accountable to our DEI commitments with support from our DEI Advisory Board and Council.
Our DEI efforts are led by our DEI Council, which is comprised of diverse employees from across the organization and chaired by our COO. Our DEI Council is committed to executing our strategy and representing the voices of our employees.
“We know that inclusive workplaces are more innovative and often outperform competitors. But more important than the business case are our employees’ experiences. We want to continue to foster a workplace culture where every employee feels valued and knows their voice will be heard.”
–Josh Viets, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and DEI executive sponsor
Advancing Our Efforts
While we’ve historically valued diversity within our workforce, we seek to do more to advance DEI both within our culture and outside our organization. We pledge to be transparent and intentional in our progress regarding the below focus areas:
Key Impact Areas
Recruiting and Retention
Benefits
Pay and Performance
Programs and Support
Education and Events
In 2023, we made progress in several of these areas, working to advance our DEI strategy and commitments. We:
- Piloted and adopted anti-bias software in our hiring processes
- Removed gendered language from our job descriptions
- Re-defined the goals of our DEI Advisory Board, Council and support network
- Published workforce demographics quarterly for greater transparency among our workforce
- Developed and distributed an all-employee survey, which included measuring DEI behaviors
- Implemented a diverse culture-focused calendar of events and communication activities to ensure all employees feel included and celebrated
Annually, as required by law, we report on the diversity of our workforce as defined by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). For added transparency, we publicly disclose our most recent Consolidated EEO-1 Report.
Supporting DEI Outside of Our Organization
Through supply chain management and our community investment activities, we can support DEI progress. Our Supplier Diversity Program works beyond our workforce to increase the number of diverse suppliers hired by Chesapeake and to encourage the availability of a healthy and diverse supplier base to support our business. Although definitions vary, we identify diverse suppliers as businesses at least 51% owned, managed and controlled by people with disabilities, minorities, women, veterans or LGBGTQ+ individuals.
Through this program, we have the ability to measure the number of diverse suppliers included in bids and hired by the company. We also added a requirement to our application requiring all vendors to have their own zero-tolerance anti-harassment policy in place to be considered for approval and hiring.
In our local communities, we seek to build meaningful partnerships focused on strengthening and celebrating diversity within our operating areas. We do this in many ways, including through financial donations, in-kind gifts and employee volunteer efforts.
