SOCIAL
SOCIALEquinix empowers the communities we inhabit by leveraging our resources and expertise as the world’s digital infrastructure company. Equinix invests in the communities who need it most -enabling widespread, equitable and inclusive access to the digital world so that all can prosper. At Equinix, we continue to embed purpose in all that we do and to generate both positive social and economic impact through our community programs.
We continue to evolve our community impact efforts to be strategic and localized with the following main areas of impact:
- Engaging Employees: Developing purposeful connections between our people and our communities.
- Digital Inclusion: Partnering for impact and inclusion in the digital world, we work with organizations with shared values to multiply our impact.
- Pathways to Opportunity: Providing training and development opportunities for diverse talent through workforce development.
- Equity & Social justice: Identifying opportunities to foster social/racial justice & equity across all areas remains a key focus.
Evolving Our Social Impact Strategy
Equinix is in the process of revisiting our social impact strategy and exploring ways to deepen our commitments to create shared value—generating a societal benefit for communities as well as our business.
This year we hosted a series of 30 listening sessions across the company to gain a better understanding of what social impact means to our employees, our business, and our local communities. In doing so, we identified four potential areas of focus: STEM-related workforce development, leveraging our technology and expertise for good, social and environmental innovation, and supporting strategic and localized community impact. In 2022, we will continue to explore how we can most strategically make an impact in the communities we serve.
We saw an eight percent increase in enrollment in 2021, which brings enrollment to almost 17% above the average. We are excited to see strong program engagement and have seen a direct correlation between platform engagement and lower medical costs and claims.
In 2021, we also launched the LeveledUp! Program within the Virgin Pulse platform, where highly engaged members received more opportunities for rewards and incentives. Each quarter, one of these regularly engaged employees received a choice of a Peloton bike, treadmill or rowing machine. As a result of the program, we saw more than 100 additional members’ engagement increase, with nearly 500 employees demonstrating consistently high-level engagement with healthy habits and wellness activities throughout the year.
Equinix Employee Relief Fund (EERF)
Launched in 2020, the Equinix Employee Relief Fund continues to be a central way that our employees support one another. In 2021, employees donated over US$30,000 into the EERF, and 27 grants were awarded totaling US$55,771 (average grant size was US$1959). “This grant truly is a great emergency assistance resource. I was able to move quickly in the best interest of my health knowing that Equinix has a way of reimbursing me.” ~ Employee Recipient of EERF Grant
Employee Engagement
Equinix Impact Program
Our impact begins with our employees: the heart and soul of our company. Our employee-led Equinix Impact program empowers our workforce to give back to their communities through service and donations, supported by our volunteer and employee matching gift programs. By teaming up to give back to our communities, we develop purposeful connections that in turn support employee engagement and retention.
We continue to update our program to align strategically with our corporate priorities and objectives. In 2021, we expanded our hybrid efforts of engagement with both virtual and in-person opportunities. This resulted in 16,556 employee service hours and US$2,042,959 in employee giving, corporate matching funds and grants. Our engagement rate was 28% for our volunteer and donation matching programs.
COVID 2:1 Relief Campaign for Brazil, India and the Philippines
From end of April through mid-June 2021, we raised a combined total of nearly US$230,000 for causes supporting Covid relief in Brazil, India and the Philippines.
(Never Ever Give Up) Care Cards
In 2021, we continued our partnership with Verizon, our customer, to create Care Cards for non-profit Never Ever Give Up (NEGU), offering encouragement and hope to kids and their families fighting cancer. To date, we have jointly created 17,000 Care Cards.
Equinix Impact Month
Each year in October, Equinix employees join forces to serve their communities through a month of volunteer and fundraising efforts. Our 2021 Equinix Impact Month was our largest employee participation event yet, both in volunteer hours and funds raised, with over 1700 employees participating virtually and in-person (a 34% increase YoY), raising over US$322,000 (a 87.8% increase YoY) and providing over 7300 service hours (a 306% increase YoY). In 2021, our impact stretched across 458 causes, 44.8% more causes than the year prior. Collaborations with WeAreEquinix teams, Employee Connection Networks and the Wellbeing team were pivotal in garnering participation and led to new partnerships with cause-based groups.
Love, Equinix
Launched in 2021, “Love, Equinix” is the Community & Belonging team’s newsletter distributed to global employees. The newsletter highlights work (past, present and future) across the Equinix pillars of Community Impact, DIB and Wellbeing. These newsletters connect the Equinix community and capture the essence and purpose of our sustainability strategy and impacts in these areas. This uniquely beautiful newsletter—essentially a love letter to the Equinix community– has received positive employee feedback and provides a meaningful channel of employee engagement.
Digital Inclusion
Fueling Open-Source Innovation
Equinix actively supports the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). As part of our commitment to cloud native and open-source communities, we contribute to and manage the CNCF’s Community Infrastructure Lab (CIL), which provides free access to state-of-the-art computing resources for open-source developers working to advance cloud native computing. Innovators from throughout the CNCF community can now access up to USD$1 million of powerful on-demand infrastructure resources per year across Equinix’s global footprint. Inspired by donations from Equinix Metal and others, CNCF created the Cloud Credits program to make is easy for participating companies to donate infrastructure resources to CNCF projects.
Zachary Smith, Managing Director, Bare Metal, Equinix
“Everyone is invited to apply and join other digital leaders in advancing open source and hybrid cloud innovation on the CNCF CIL. We believe that open-source innovation on specialized, software-defined bare metal infrastructure is the key to unlocking the potential of hybrid and multicloud architectures. Our investment in the CNCF’s CIL demonstrates our commitment to the cloud native and open-source communities at large.”
Partnering to Build STEM Skills
As the demand for a STEM-educated workforce continues to increase, while the skills gap stubbornly persists, our employee-led partnerships with organizations such as P-TECH and Lucy are offering a path forward by reaching younger generations. P-TECH is a global STEM organization preparing young people with academic, technical and professional skills to help close the gap between early-stage careers and high-growth industries. The Lucy program connects Australian college students to industry professionals for one-on-one mentoring opportunities.
Additionally, we recognize International Data Center Day each March as an opportunity to engage with young individuals to demonstrate both employment opportunities in the data center industry as well as the importance of connecting with communities for societal impact. Supporting these organizations and efforts in creating new pathways for workforce development has emerged as a defining issue for our employee-led community impact efforts.
Connecting Qualified Talent to In-Demand Jobs
According to the Uptime Institute, 50% of data center operators reported having difficulty finding qualified candidates for open jobs in 2020, compared to 38% in 2018. Additionally, their research shows that by 2025, approximately 300,000 jobs will need to be filled in Washington D.C.1 To help address this gap and develop a qualified talent pool, Equinix is rethinking how our resources, expertise and community impact initiatives can be a part of the solution.
Equinix has teamed up with the Northern Virginia Community College Educational Foundation and their financial aid office to create the Equinix Digital Infrastructure Scholarship Program. The annual scholarship program launched in 2021 with a goal to provide funding of US$5000 each to 5 students. In addition to the financial support, students receive mentorship, a paid internship, and increased access to Equinix job opportunities.
In 2021, we collaborated with Singapore Management University to award a Sustainability Scholarship, aimed at motivating outstanding undergraduates who want to expand their learning across traditional academic disciplines by taking on a major in Sustainability. The goal is to provide a funding of SGD60,000 for two students for two years.
Bridging the Digital Divide
World Pulse is an independent, women-led social network and safe digital refuge connecting women worldwide for social change. Members of our Equinix Women Leaders Network (EWLN), an employee connection network that fosters personal and professional development, often act as encouragers to support digital access, gender equity and inclusion through engagement with World Pulse. In 2021, we continued to invest in our partnership and increase our impact to the organization by co-funding and co-promoting World Pulse with our customer Vodafone.
Equinix first connected with World Pulse in 2015. Since then, our partnership has included a total of US$240,000 in donations and 300 employee volunteer hours that have empowered more than 250 World Pulse leaders to train more than 60,000 women with digital skills to become agents of change and inclusion. Our 2021 grant of US$25,000, co-funded in partnership with Vodafone, supports World Pulse’s Her Digital Leadership Alliance. Her Digital Leadership Alliance aims to connect 20,000 emerging leaders across 50+ countries with gender-transformative digital advocacy and leadership skills to benefit millions more in local efforts to bridge the gender digital divide.
Supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
| SDG # | SDG Category | Volunteer Hours 2021 | Volunteer Hours 2015-2021 | Donations 2021 (in US$) | Donations 2015-2021 (in US$) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | No Poverty | 212 | 387 | $22,894 | $207,756 |
| 2 | Zero Hunger | 569 | 5,293 | $331,070 | $1,122,166 |
| 3 | Good Health and Well-being | 1,429 | 5,523 | $326,688 | $1,285,267 |
| 4 | Quality Education | 1,454 | 10,747 | $281,264 | $1,470,441 |
| 6 | Clean Water and Sanitation | 0 | 26 | $62,187 | $86,494 |
| 8 | Decent Work and Economic Growth | 43 | 2,343 | $49,217 | $457,175 |
| 10 | Reduced Inequalities | 53 | 1,005 | $29,400 | $158,203 |
| 11 | Sustainable Cities and Communities | 4,305 | 16,100 | $600,611 | $2,229,157 |
| 15 | Life on Land | 1,047 | 4,500 | $124,623 | $334,458 |
| 16 | Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions | 444 | 961 | $30,554 | $148,775 |
| TOTAL | 9,351 | 64,873 | $2,216,011 | $5,940,292 | |
| 1Network World, Data-center training, recruitment need to change to meet staffing demands, Feb 2021; Uptime Institute, The People Challenge: Global Data Center Staffing Forecast 2021-2025; Data Center Dynamics, Data centers need to find 300,000 more staff by 2025, Jan 2021. | |||||