SOCIAL
At Equinix, maintaining our employees’ physical, mental and emotional health remains a topmost priority. Our business is only as successful as our employees’ ability to serve each other, our customers and the communities in which we live and operate.
Fostering Balanced Wellbeing
Part of being an employer committed to providing an inclusive and safe workplace is supporting our employees’ physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Our wellbeing programs aim to provide the resources employees need to support their wellbeing objectives.
Developing a Global Wellbeing Strategy
For Equinix, wellbeing is not just a program; we strive to design wellbeing into our ways of working. Our wellbeing initiatives strengthen our employees’ mental resilience, while providing a space where everyone can safely and dependably access the resources they seek.
We have taken a personalized approach to wellbeing through targeted listening sessions across job types, as well as a session for our permanent remote workers, to understand challenges, needs and preferences. Our listening sessions also included an enlightening meeting with 70 operations leaders and visits to several of our data centers to understand the day-to-day work experiences in Operations. We added to the listening sessions by analyzing Pulse survey results and reviewed our employee assistance program usage data. On a recent Pulse survey, we asked whether employees felt supported by their managers to prioritize their wellbeing, and employees overwhelmingly said yes.
This combined effort has informed our Global Wellbeing Strategy, with the intention to design globally inclusive wellbeing programs and experiences and integrate wellbeing into the way we work.
Support for Challenging Times
We consistently take stock of world events and listen to feedback so we may respond appropriately. A diverse global team meets to discuss how to address key events and engages with various employee groups to gain perspective and ensure we develop thoughtful, considerate responses. Sometimes this has come in the form of open dialogues on a topic, others have required that we partner with third-party wellness providers. Either way, we support our employees and are committed to being responsive to the topics and events that affect our employees and their communities.
Wellbeing as Part of Leadership Development
Creating a culture of wellbeing starts at the top. It is through the consistent demonstration of leadership role modeling that our workforce experiences the safety to prioritize their wellbeing. That is why we integrated wellbeing into our Archimedes Leadership Development Program for more than 50 aspiring leaders. Over the course of 12 weeks, participants were introduced to various wellbeing rituals for them to share with their teams. Making wellbeing a part of how we work enables leaders to stay present under pressure and help their teams to thrive, too.
Wellbeing was one of the best parts of Archimedes, no question. It created a safe place to be vulnerable, and without that learning is MUCH more difficult.”
– Anonymous participant
Additionally, we grew our global community of wellbeing activists at the leadership level by providing 225 global leaders across all regions and departments with a 12-week digital wellness program, “Unplug Revolution,” to feel supported in their wellbeing journey as they empower others in theirs. Leaders engaged in weekly activities and check-ins across 12 wellbeing themes, including intentions, daily habits, creativity, stillness, trust, balance, and play. Leaders cited learning a great deal from the program, check-in sessions being the highlight of their weeks, and the program itself further underscoring Equinix’s commitment to employee wellbeing.
“The Unplug Revolution Program has been a game changer! After joining the program, I feel much more connected, mindful, and focused. Given improvements to my mental health, I also started sharing the Unplug activities we’re going through with my wife and children so that we can all grow and learn together.”
– Sr. Manager, Talent Management & Mobility
Advocating for Women-Centric Dialogues
A topic that will affect nearly half the world’s population is a topic that is fit for the workplace. We hosted our first-ever Menopause Awareness series with six events led by two external subject matter experts on Menopause and Nutrition. More than 500 participants learned how hormones can change during perimenopause and menopause, common symptoms and management, and how to nourish our bodies throughout the phases of our lives. We also worked to normalize the topic and discussed easy-to-use workplace solutions to promote a positive, inclusive culture where employees feel supported in prioritizing both personal wellbeing and performance.
Meeting Employees’ Various Wellbeing Needs
Our strategy remains dedicated to supporting the ideation and validation of inclusive wellbeing solutions for everyone at Equinix. We held many events throughout the year that supported and celebrated our employees continued good health and wellness.
Mental Health Awareness Trainings
In 2022, our Global Wellbeing team hosted four webinars on mental health awareness. Two sessions were open to all global employees to understand the universality of mental health issues in the workplace, recognize the most common symptoms and warning signs of mental illness, and identify support services and resources. Two additional sessions focused on global people managers to identify common mistakes in responding to employees in distress, gain communication skills, reduce the stigma associated with mental illness, and promote ways of offering support.
El Camino de Equinix
In 2022, GenteConnect—in partnership with PrideConnect—invited global employees back for a second year of El Camino de Equinix Virtual Walking Challenge, where employees around the world were encouraged to complete a 100-kilometer virtual pilgrimage on foot during the month of July (alternative activities were supported for participants unable to complete the challenge on foot). In 2022, we saw participation nearly triple, as the club grew from 129 members to 342 with 45 employees earning their “Equistela” certificate for completing the entire pilgrimage.
Pictured above: Caroline Justi, winner of El Camino de Equinix Photo Contest. As part of the challenge, Caroline Justi completed a three-day trek in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, walking 36 kilometers across Travessia Petrópolis-Teresópolis.
A Community Movement
During Equinix Impact Month, employees and Team Equinix experienced the most successful year ever at the American Diabetes Association’s “Tour de Cure” events. By encouraging colleagues to run, ride, walk, hike, swim and/or crochet for the cause, Equinix employees banded together to raise more than US$180,000 for the American Diabetes Association. An Equinix team based in Denver, Colorado, even summited a 14,000-foot peak to raise awareness and funds!
Wellbeing Community Growth
Although our wellbeing struggles may feel unique, there is a lot we have in common. To feel that sense of common humanity while feeling empowered and energized by co-workers, Equinix is being intentional about growing our wellbeing community:
- Our online wellbeing community has grown to 1,330+ members (YoY increase of more than 33%).
- Our growing community of movement enthusiasts in the Equinix Strava Club now totals nearly 1,250 members (YoY increase of 14%).
- Local “Wellbeing Leads” were named alongside WeAreEquinix local teams in 48 countries and metros.
- To help employees regularly decompress, we continued our 15-minute wellbeing breaks initiative in 2022, with programming three days a week, covering topics such as mindfulness, social connection, and gratitude. Over the course of the year, 27 employee volunteers facilitated 355 wellbeing breaks for global colleagues. Participants conveyed that these sessions were critical to avoiding feelings of isolation while increasing feelings of connectedness with global colleagues and our business.
- “The past several months I’ve been regularly attending the virtual wellbeing sessions—I love them! These sessions and people have been a savior to me. The people I have never met in person or worked with have made me laugh, the calmness of the Monday meditations have helped bring focus to my day, and Thursday’s sessions bring new perspective. The space is always safe, where attendees and hosts spread positivity, hope, and joy and not judgement.” – Senior Training Specialist (Chicago)
A More Natural Approach
The way our spaces make us feel can greatly impact our overall wellbeing and productivity. Our “Nature by Design” initiative aims to create holistically designed environments in our data center facilities to harmonize the physical, mental and spiritual health of employees. The intention is to create positive day-to-day experiences so that our employees can deliver their best work and enhance their wellbeing. Equinix worked with key leaders in our Operations, Sustainability, and Design and Construction groups to explore how green environments can be built in our data centers and how employees and customers in those spaces can benefit from the surroundings. Design and building of green spaces in our data centers is underway.
Looking ahead, we are committed to further enhancing our employees’ physical, mental, emotional, financial and social health by deepening the connection of these vital programs with our core business activities.
Read more about how our global events connect wellness and social sustainability with environmental benefits in our Healthy and Sustainable Offices section.
Equitable Pay and Benefits
We remain dedicated to ensuring our employees are treated and compensated equitably and have access to market competitive benefits and time away from work. To enable our employees to be well, we provide benefits that support our employees’ needs at work and home, such as medical plans, employee assistance programs, life insurance, tuition reimbursement, discounts and other locally relevant programs.
Safeguarding Our Employees’ Health and Happiness
Equinix is committed to offering benefits that merge seamlessly with our business practices. With the aim of actively supporting our employees while keeping them safe, our benefits team works tirelessly to offer a high-level strategy and guiding principles, a process for annual review of benefits and language for inclusion and wellbeing. Through it all, our benefits leadership remains focused on inclusion within benefits, ensuring that they are competitive from a global and local perspective.
Remaining Dedicated to Inclusion
In 2022, we executed a global review of Equinix benefits, including all countries, and compared to the local market. The focus of this review was to ensure that we provided competitive benefits to meet the needs of our diverse group of employees in all markets globally, as well as providing minimum standards where applicable. We continued collaborating with EECNs to provide our employees with vital knowledge and updates around benefits. This gave us the opportunity to communicate how benefits support our EECNs and impact each country differently, and how benefits and EECNs impact each other.
Redefining our Benefits
This year, we amended our benefits to better respect cultural norms and regional differences. Through this, we took steps to recognize the increased use of pronouns and acknowledge our employees who identify as queer, transgendered and nonbinary. Additionally, we updated our Business Partner Code of Conduct to provide more inclusive language and expanded the definition of “family” in the Asia-Pacific region, to accommodate cultural norms.
Expanded Parental Leave
Having quality time with the newest member of the family to adjust and bond is an important and special time for parents. This is why Equinix provides the opportunity for our employees who become parents to spend this valuable time with their families.
Equinix has a paid time off policy for parental leave for all new parents to bond with their newborn, newly adopted child or new child through foster care placement. We are currently implementing an eight-week global minimum standard for all countries, targeting completion for the first quarter of 2023.
Expanding to include leave of absence benefits was our highest-impact step for improving employee benefits in 2022. This decision was made based on feedback from the EECNs. We work to ensure our leaves are fully inclusive and meet the changing needs of our employees and their dependents.
Commitment to Equitable Pay
At Equinix, we believe employees should have equitable pay and opportunities at every level of the organization. Our talent acquisition and promotions processes are fair and consistent in offering equitable pay and opportunity, as well as for rewarding employees, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other group identities.
Equinix operates a governance framework to review and ensure equitable base, bonus and long-term incentives. All roles are aligned to one consistent global organizational framework. Each job has a specific pay range created by benchmarking against the external market in the country in which the job is located. This global framework is also used to determine target levels for annual bonuses and long-term incentives. Every year, we review our available market data in every country in which we operate and make changes as appropriate.
However, we also realize there’s always more to ensure equitable pay. We are consistently evaluating and enhancing our processes to attract and retain diverse talent and to pay employees equitably for the work they perform. We have maintained our commitment to conducting pay studies annually, where data is available, and to identify and address differences in pay by gender globally, as well as race and ethnicity in the U.S.