Fostering a Community of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Southern Company
Originally published in Southern Company's 2021 Corporate Responsibility Executive Summary Report
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) are essential aspects for our company. At Southern Company, Our Values foster a diverse, inclusive, equitable and innovative culture so that employees can execute our business strategy with agility and accountability. Our Moving to Equity work reflects our committment to DE&I in our workforce and our communities. Our community efforts include partnerships with diverse suppliers and philanthropic investments in historically underrepresented and marginalized communities.
- We have refocused our efforts toward a more holistic goal of diversity, equity and inclusion
- Energy justice has been added as a focus area in our Moving to Equity initiative
- Southern Company is committed to supplier diversity that reflects the diversity of our customer base and energizes our success
Spotlight: Moving to Equity
Following events in 2020 highlighting racial injustice in our society, we adopted Moving to Equity as our framework to demonstrate a collective commitment to our work. Subsequently, we published a 2021 Moving to Equity report updating stakeholders on progress in our commitment areas.
Key efforts and commitments include:
- Talent: committing to a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace to better serve our customers and communities; increasing and improving outreach, recruitment, hiring and retention of diverse groups at all levels of the workforce; ensuring equity in leadership development programs; and seeking diverse candidate slates for all positions, including management roles.
- Culture: promoting an actively anti-racist culture to ensure that all groups, especially historically underrepresented and marginalized groups, are wellrepresented, included and fairly treated within all levels of the organization, and that everyone feels welcomed, valued and respected.
- Community: committing $225 million over five years to advance racial equity and social justice in our communities with a focus on criminal justice, economic empowerment, the advancement of educational equality and energy justice.
- Political Engagement: advocating for racial equity through our political engagement, policy positions and ongoing public dialogues.
- Suppliers: aiming to increase our minority business enterprise spend to 20% and total diverse spend to 30% by 2025, and committing to developing and doing business with more Black-owned businesses in our industry and communities.
We provide updates on our progress through our Boldly Forward website and an annual Moving to Equity report.
Commitment to Undertake a Racial Equity Audit
Southern Company has committed to undertake a racial equity audit, conducted by a third party in 2023, in response to feedback from key stakeholders. The audit will focus on Southern Company’s implementation of initiatives to support racial equity and inclusivity within our workforce and the communities we serve, as set forth in our Moving to Equity commitment framework. As part of the process, we will engage key stakeholders including employees and civic organizations relevant to the audit. We anticipate publishing a report based on the audit at the end of 2023.
