CARING FOR OUR PEOPLE

Our employees’ ability to best serve each other, our customers and the communities in which we live and operate, begins with a healthy mind and body. As we learn more about the drivers of mental and physical wellbeing, we have increased our investment in programs and initiatives that support our employees’ physical, mental and emotional health. Our robust benefits help employees and their immediate family members take care of their everyday needs and unique obstacles they may face. The health and safety of our employees, customers, suppliers, partners and community neighbors continues to be a top priority.

Employee Wellbeing

As the lines between work and life have further blurred over the past few years, concerns for personal wellbeing have been brought into greater focus. We recognize that our employees face several hurdles to maintain their physical and mental wellbeing, and we want to connect them to helpful resources. While feedback through regular surveys indicates that our employees feel highly supported in sustaining their wellbeing, this work is a continued area of prioritization. Examples of our employee wellbeing programs are detailed in this section and highlights of our progress in 2021 include:

• We hired our first Director of Global Wellbeing who performed an internal assessment to guide our continual investment and expansion of employee wellbeing offerings.
• Our multifaceted wellbeing program now includes a variety of daily breaks, weekly and monthly wellbeing classes, global challenges, guest speakers, health and wellness education and information sessions, and special events.
• Our online wellbeing community has grown to over 1,000 members.
• Local wellbeing leads were named alongside the launch of WeAreEquinix local teams in 12 countries.
• We grew our global community of wellbeing activists to over 60 members and provided them all with a 12-week digital wellness program to feel supported in their wellbeing journey as they empower others in theirs.
• 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.

Supporting Employee Mental Health

Today’s ever-changing societal and business environments have brought new dynamics and pressures that require resilience, courage, discernment, creativity, connection and flexibility. Our wellbeing strategy is aimed at supporting our people to grow these qualities and thrive. Our wellbeing programs are expanding as we support and strengthen our employees’ mental resilience, while creating a safe space for every person to discuss their wellbeing needs and access the resources they seek.

For example, we are creating communities where our employees can safely discuss and engage on mental health topics:

• Our wellbeing community on Yammer continued to expand, growing over 40% and reaching over 1,000 members in 2021.
• We hosted open houses for the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) where more than 1,000 employees participated, and more than 100 questions were answered, resulting in a utilization increase from 11% in 2020 to 30% in 2021.
• Our “virtual café” allows global managers to come together to learn and discuss how to identify and address signs of stress in the workplace.
• In team gatherings, wellbeing continues to be an important topic on the agenda.

We continually look at ways to help our employees decompress. In 2021, we continued our 15-minute wellbeing breaks initiative, with programming four times a day, four days a week, covering topics such as mindfulness, movement, social connection and gratitude. Over the course of the year, 24 employee volunteers facilitated more than 700 wellbeing breaks for global colleagues, a 40% increase from 2020. Those who participated responded to feedback surveys conveying that these sessions are truly life-changing and foster a supportive community, prompting us to continue our efforts to increase engagement.

“During such a difficult time over the last 18+ months the opportunity to engage with others during the day while I continue to work from home has been very positive.”

-Iain Gaffney

Additionally, we hosted another global company “shutdown” to allow employees to unplug and enjoy time away from work. We also encouraged employees to take additional days that week as PTO or vacation to further maximize their downtime.

Incorporating Wellbeing in How We Work

We continue to look at how we can embed wellbeing criteria directly into our business operations. For example, we launched six new “Finding a Better Way” initiatives to address worker burnout and mental health. Our “Better Way Day” advocates for a meeting-free Wednesday and we aim to cap meetings at either 25 or 50 minutes to allow short breaks in between meetings. In April 2021, we launched Movement Meetings to address video call fatigue. During movement meetings, employees are encouraged to turn off their cameras and move during the meeting instead of remaining stationary.

Wellbeing Special Events

In 2021, we continued to hold special events to engage and celebrate employees taking action on their health and wellness.

To celebrate the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, our EECNs, interASIANconnect and Equinix Women Leaders Network, along with Talent Acquisition Pathways and Global Wellbeing partnered to host a memorable event with speaker and filmmaker Yuriko Romer who created a film documenting the life and legacy of Keiko Fukuda, the Japanese American martial artist. Equinix employees were granted private access to watch a screening of the film and invited join a discussion where Yuriko Romer spoke to her experience of documenting and amplifying the stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders, women and athletes.

On World Sleep Day, we hosted three one-hour workshops on how to prevent and manage sleep disorders. Employees learned about important sleep facts, tips for healthy sleep, sleep resources available to Equinix employees (including direct access to a trained clinician for support and referrals to local experts), and how employees may take action to improve sleep habits for themselves and the people around them. The workshops were attended by over 500 participants from over 17 countries, a 40% increase from 2020. Additionally, 95% of participants reported being satisfied with the workshops and 82% were inspired to take action to improve their sleep habits. 66 employees from 11 countries took the Sleep Pledge, to prioritize getting a full night of healthy sleep each night by selecting one action they would take.

On Global Running Day, over 137 participants, and on World Bike Day, over 106 participants, came together to raise awareness for the joys of running and cycling. Our growing community of movement enthusiasts in the Equinix Strava Club totals over 1,100 members.

We hosted eight global sessions to discuss the meaning of Happiness in a Digital World, partnering with Happiness Practitioners from the UK, Singapore, the UAE, and Canada to explore what happiness is, how to prioritize it and find peace in our lives, how we amplify it at work, and how we can pay it forward and make meaningful connections in the world.

Benefits

Equinix is committed to ensuring that we continue to offer progressive benefits that meet the changing needs of our employees in all countries where we operate.

Our “My Benefits” platform helps streamline the benefits experience and ensures that employees have full visibility into what is available to them. The program improves how employees access their benefits while also requiring less oversight and improved administration for Equinix. Since 2021, we have launched new Benefits content on “MyHR,” which allows us to further standardize information, content architecture, and frameworks to provide consistent HR materials and resources regionally. We have continued collaboration between our Wellbeing team and EECNs who provide vital local knowledge and insights into employee needs.

Blending life and work

To enable our employees to be their best selves at work, we provide benefits to support a meaningful and fulfilling personal life, such as tuition reimbursement, perks and discounts, voluntary pet insurance, and support through life events. In 2021, we conducted a full review of our policies to have a deeper look at how they compare across our locations, with the goal of ongoing improvement to ensure we are meeting a set standard of offerings globally.

Expanded Parental Leave

Employee Safety

We comply with all local, state and country safety legislation and follow a Global Environment Health and Safety (EHS) Standard Policy that ensures that Equinix conducts all business activities in a responsible manner. This means being free from recognized hazards, respecting the environment, and protecting the health and safety of our employees, customers, suppliers, partners and community neighbors. It also means complying with all applicable environmental, health and safety laws and regulations of countries, states, provinces, and communities where we operate. 80% of our policies are globalized. We also regularly conduct standardized internal audits and engage 3rd parties to conduct audits.

Safety within our IBX data centers is a top priority, as most health and safety risks apply within those sites. In 2019, we transitioned EMEA to ISO 45001—the new international Occupational Health and Safety Management standard —and to date 77 centers in EMEA are managed under this standard. To achieve these standards, companies must demonstrate that they are managing and improving safety. We are working to further globalize our ISO certification in the coming years. Looking to go a step further in our safety measures, in 2021, we launched our Near Miss campaign in EMEA that creates awareness and visibility on near miss numbers to further inform our processes and potential improvements. After training through the campaign, we saw near miss reporting increase by 90 percent in EMEA.

We also committed to continuous improvement across all corporate health and safety operations. We continue to expand our EHS staffing across the globe, in all regions. Additionally, the Operations Knowledge Base (OKB) was launched in 2021 to better curate resources, including a site for EHS and all related policies. We offer hundreds of EHS training courses in multiple languages, with localized versions offered for many trainings.