Company earns spot among top 100 companies who are promoting a diverse workforce and opening doors for new leaders
AVANGRID, Inc. (NYSE: AGR), a leading sustainable energy company and part of the Iberdrola Group, today announced it has been named among the top 100 companies on JUST Capital’s 2022 Workforce Equity and Mobility Ranking. This new ranking, built with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, highlights companies that perform best on key disclosure and performance metrics that advance racial equity and opportunity for their workers and communities. AVANGRID ranked 78, demonstrating its commitment to investing in hiring, training, and promoting a diverse workforce and creating new pathways for the leaders of tomorrow. This honor follows the company’s recognition earlier this year by JUST Capital as one of the JUST 100 companies.
“We are committed to building and sustaining a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture with equitable opportunities for our employees to grow and develop,” said Pedro Azagra, CEO of AVANGRID. “Being recognized as a top company for workforce equity and mobility is an honor and demonstrates that our DE&I strategy and efforts are cementing AVANGRID as an employer of choice.”
For this thematic ranking, JUST Capital examined company performance on 15 key metrics from its Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies – from prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) policies and offering career development to providing local employment pipelines, fair pay and quality worker benefits.
Contributing to AVANGRID’s high ranking is its numerous programs, policies and resources focused on DE&I, including:
- Unconscious bias training: Implemented across the organization, including as part of the company’s Hiring Manager Certification. The training consists of curated learning paths, synchronous training opportunities and e-learning.
- Diversity in Succession programs: To ensure more diversity in race and gender among senior leaders.
- Business Resource Groups (BRGs): AVANGRID’s seven BRGs provide “safe-zones” where employees can raise important issues and celebrate the variety of different cultures, ethnicities and identities.
- Comprehensive benefits: Including paid parental leave, fertility and family-forming care and coverage, tools and programs to support mental health, legal assistance and identity theft protection.
- Leadership Essentials: A four-track curriculum that includes instructor-led courses, e-learning, peer groups and on-the-job experiences to provide new leaders with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed.
Additionally, AVANGRID has active involvement with key public memberships like Paradigm for Parity, with the company pledging to achieve full gender parity by 2030; Disability:IN, a leading nonprofit resource for business disability inclusion; and CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, with the company pledging to support a more inclusive workplace for employees, communities and society at large. These public memberships demonstrate AVANGRID’s commitment to elevate the DE&I conversation with peers, while creating effective change for individuals with varying abilities and increasing gender parity in senior operating roles.
“Our vision is to make AVANGRID a place where talented and committed people want to build long-term careers,” said Kyra Patterson, Chief Human Resources Officer at AVANGRID. “Every day, our employees provide the energy and innovation that help make us a leading sustainable energy company. We want to ensure that we offer quality and diverse programs, benefits and resources to keep our team engaged and energized.”
Compared with their Russell 1000 peers, the top 100 companies in the Workforce Equity and Mobility Ranking:
- Were 4.6x more likely to disclose a DEI target (62% compared to 13%).
- Were 2.4x more likely to disclose that they offered an apprenticeship program to employees (53% compared to 22%).
- Offered, on average, 13 more hours in training or career development per employee (32 hours compared to 19 hours).
- Were 7.3x more likely to disclose that they had a re-entry program (12% compared to 1.6%).
- Were 5.2x more likely to have conducted a gender pay gap analysis (81% compared to 16%)
- Were 8.2x more likely to have conducted a race/ethnicity pay gap analysis (68% compared to 8%).
- Offered, on average, 1.7 more weeks of parental leave for primary caregivers (12 weeks compared to 10.3 weeks).
- Offered, on average, 1.8 more weeks of parental leave for secondary caregivers (8.5 weeks compared to 6.7 weeks).
- Had 6 percentage points higher board gender diversity (34% compared to 28%).
About AVANGRID: AVANGRID, Inc. (NYSE: AGR) aspires to be the leading sustainable energy company in the United States. Headquartered in Orange, CT with approximately $40 billion in assets and operations in 24 U.S. states, AVANGRID has two primary lines of business: Avangrid Networks and Avangrid Renewables. Avangrid Networks owns and operates eight electric and natural gas utilities, serving more than 3.3 million customers in New York and New England. Avangrid Renewables owns and operates a portfolio of renewable energy generation facilities across the United States. AVANGRID employs more than 7,000 people and has been recognized by JUST Capital in 2021 and 2022 as one of the JUST 100 companies – a ranking of America’s best corporate citizens. In 2022, AVANGRID ranked second within the utility sector for its commitment to the environment and the communities it serves. The company supports the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals and was named among the World’s Most Ethical Companies in 2022 for the fourth consecutive year by the Ethisphere Institute. AVANGRID is a member of the group of companies controlled by Iberdrola, S.A. For more information, visit www.avangrid.com.
About Iberdrola: Iberdrola is one of the world's biggest energy companies and a leader in renewables, spearheading the energy transition to a low carbon economy. The group supplies energy to almost 100 million people in dozens of countries. With a focus on renewable energy, smart networks and smart solutions for customers, Iberdrola’s main markets include Europe (Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and Greece), the United States, Brazil, Mexico and Australia. The company is also present in growth markets such as Japan, Taiwan, Ireland, Sweden and Poland, among others.
With a workforce of nearly 40,000 and assets in excess of €141.7 billion, the company posted revenues of €39 billion and a net profit of over €3.9 billion in 2021. Across the world, Iberdrola helps to support 400,000 jobs across its supply chain, with annual procurement of €12.2 billion. A benchmark in the fight against climate change, Iberdrola has invested more than €130 billion over the past two decades to help build a sustainable energy model, based on sound environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles.
About JUST Capital: JUST Capital is an independent nonprofit dedicated to measuring and improving corporate stakeholder performance – from fair wages to workforce diversity to climate commitments – at America’s largest public companies. Our mission is to tackle the most pressing social challenges of our time by galvanizing the collective power of corporate America. We believe that business and markets can and must be a greater force for good, and that by shifting the resources of the $19 trillion private sector, we can address systemic issues at scale. Guided by the priorities of the public, our research, rankings, indexes, and data-driven tools help deliver on the promise of stakeholder capitalism and an economy that works for all Americans. JUST Capital publishes the annual list of America’s Most JUST Companies, the JUST 100, in partnership with CNBC. To learn more, visit: www.JUSTCapital.com.
About Our Methodology: Since 2015, JUST Capital has surveyed more than 150,000 Americans on what Issues they believe U.S. companies should prioritize most when it comes to just business behavior. Those Issues become the foundation by which we track, analyze, and incentivize corporate behavior change, including the Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies. JUST evaluated 954 companies across 5 stakeholders, 20 Issues, and 241 raw data points to produce the 2022 Rankings, including the JUST 100 and Industry Leader lists. This Workforce Equity and Mobility Ranking utilizes 15 specific metrics from JUST's Rankings that best capture how companies perform on issues relating to racial equity, opportunity, and mobility, including: Board Diversity, Local School Support, Local Employment Pipeline, Worker Benefits Package, Work-Life Balance, Benefits and 401K Quality, Discrimination Controversies, EEOC Violations and Worker Grievance Fines, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies, Workforce Demographics, Career Development, CEO-to-Median Worker Pay, Wage Violations, Fair Pay Score, and Fair Pay Rating.
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