SOCIAL
SOCIALInvesting in talent is key to the continued growth of our company. We foster a culture at Equinix where our employees can be their whole selves at work while discovering meaningful careers and doing the best work of their lives. Our focus on talent includes developing pathways to reach diverse communities, building robust platforms to connect and engage with new talent, and continually improving the employee experience while maintaining our culture and values. We want to create a virtuous cycle of attracting, hiring and developing the very best talent that represents the diversity of our world, supports our organizational goals, and does what it takes to create a more accessible, equitable and sustainable future.
Attracting Top and Diverse Talent
We are focused on creating multiple pathways to reach new talent from diverse communities. In 2021, we forged partnerships and invested in tools and systems to grow and support our inclusive hiring practices. Through updates within recruitment marketing tools and efforts, we can more effectively reach a wider and more diverse candidate pool. These efforts contribute to a growing and resilient talent pipeline that enables us to scale our efforts at every level where we are looking for talent.
Inclusive Hiring Practices
In 2021, we continued to focus on ensuring positive and fair hiring processes. Beginning with bias mitigation training for our hiring teams, we establish the importance of creating diverse pools of candidates.
We revamped our selection process to ensure greater parity for historically underrepresented communities. Our standardized interview process includes craft demonstration and interview questions that focus on transferable skills such as problem-solving, rather than industry-specific questions, which can be exclusionary to some candidates. We will implement this approach for all new-to-career hiring across the company over the course of the next year.
We take a global stance to implementing guidelines and best practices around new hire offers that promote a consistent process. When determining new hire compensation, we do not take into consideration the current salary of a candidate nor increases based on previous salary—offers are determined based on the value a candidate job brings to Equinix. We partner with hiring compensation managers to determine the offer based on the following considerations:
- Candidate qualifications, competencies and potential, measured against internal benchmarks
- Industry and market data
- Location of the position
- Value of in-demand & key skillsets
- Supply & demand; the availability and competition for relevant talent
In 2021, we launched new tools to allow us to attract candidates with customized recruitment events, campaign landing pages and create customized email campaigns to improve candidate experience. We also implemented a candidate AI and matching tool, HiredScore, to harness the power of AI to source, score, and match for efficiency and optimization. HiredScore pulls in top matched candidates/leads from Clinch, our application tracking system, Workday, and other sourcing avenues for the job requisition and allows recruiters to score and analyze leads without bias. These tools allow us to build different talent communities and improve sourcing and recruiter efficiency.
Inclusive Talent Marketing
Our new recruitment marketing efforts provide our hiring teams visibility into optimal hiring channels for specific locations and regions while allowing personalized, inclusive and targeted communications at each step of the hiring process. In addition to onboarding Clinch, we launched global media campaigns to attract candidates beyond the current candidate pool. Since launch, we have attracted 33,000+ unique candidates to our communities.
We are increasing the ways we engage with our talent communities. Hosting events, leveraging diversity partnerships, and partnering with our EECNs help us reach targeted communities. These changes to our recruitment marketing approach have increased the diversity of our candidate pools, resulting in increased hiring of qualified diverse candidates.
Awards & Recognition
Equinix is proud to be recognized for our unique culture and strong Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging commitments through various awards and recognitions in 2021 including:
- Top CEO, Glassdoor
- Best Places to Work, Glassdoor
- “Best Company for Women”, FairyGodBoss
- Fortune’s Most Admired Companies
- Best Company to Work For, UK, Spain, Finland and Poland
- Top Workplaces 2021, The Washington Post
- Best Place to work, Australia
- Score of 100/100 on Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index
- #1 Just Capital ranking in our industry for DEI and overall for employee-led giving
- Nareit’s Bronze Award in DEI
Read more about how Equinix puts the interests and wellbeing of our employees and customers at the center of everything we do in “Working Toward a Brighter Future” by Brandi Galvin Morandi, Chief Human Resources Officer, Chief Legal Officer, General Counsel & Secretary of Equinix.
Talent Partners
Teaming up with diversity partners has enabled us to expand access to hiring opportunities for historically underrepresented communities. By including Equinix branded content and employee stories on our partner’s platforms, we can reach more candidates in these communities and provide them with visibility into a workplace that values diversity and belonging. Our partners include Power to Fly, National Society of Black Engineers, Shadhika Organization, Military Spouse Employment Partnership, Department of Defense Skillbridge, Society of Women Engineers, With You With Me, FairyGodBoss, and half-the-sky Asia.
Pathways for Diverse Talent
Our Pathways Program was founded to open new pipelines for historically underrepresented communities, improve equity and accelerate the hiring of diverse talent. The program is made up of six initiatives–Career Transition Program, Returners Program, Military Programs, Disability Initiative, Athlete Career Transition (ACT) and Government Training Initiatives–that target the occupational communities as described below. Each initiative is resourced with internal talent acquisition professionals who focus on recruiting and connecting candidates within that specific community to open positions at Equinix.
RETURNERS PROGRAM
An Opportunity for professionalsn returning to work after a career gap (maternity leave, caretaker role, sick leave,etc.)
REGIONAL
CAREER TRANSITION PROGRAM
Hiring from outside of the data center industry by a competency, aptitude and potential assessment in line with industry requirements
GLOBAL
DISABILITY INITIATIVE
Increasing community support and reducing stigmas around disability hiring. Creating awareness and education around inclusive hiring.
REGIONAL
MILITARY PROGRAM
An Opportunity for Service members and spouses to gain valuable civilian work experience through specific industry training, apprenticeships, or internships.
GLOBAL
ATHLETE CAREER TRANSITION(ACT)
Elite athlete, Paralympians, and Olympian's success is built on values, mind-set and determination, which can be transferred to a variety of business environments.
GLOBAL
GOVERNMENT TRAINING INITIATIVES
These program are focused on building skillset in order to diversify and increase workforce opportunities.
GLOBAL
For example, in 2021, our partnership with ACT to provide professional athletes with new career opportunities led to the hiring of six athletes who took on roles across Human Resources, Marketing and Sales.
In 2021, 12% of our external hires came from these programs. Through these programs we have been able to attract qualified diverse candidates including women, as well as individuals from Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx and low-income communities. Moving forward, we will continue to leverage programs like these and maximize our impact towards our diversity objectives. In 2022, our goal is that 20%+ of hiring will come from Pathways and New to Career in 2022.
Ursula Santos
Customer Project Manager
Sam Tan Wei Rong,
SGUnited Trainee.IBX Field Operations Engineer
Highlights from our Pathways Program in 2021 include:
- SGUnited Traineeship: SG United Traineeship is a collaboration with the Singapore government to provide graduates or mid-career individuals an opportunity to gain data center industry experience. In 2021, we hired six trainees under this program that provides short-term hiring opportunities to new graduates and mid-career professionals who faced difficulties in their job searches during the pandemic. The program also provides grants to companies to offset training allowances given to successfully hired trainees. Successfully hired trainees are also given the opportunity to be converted into full-time hires.
- Career Transitions Program: The Career Transition Program (CTP) allows us to expand our candidate sources beyond the typical high-tech industries, enabling candidates to join Equinix and make a successful career pivot. In 2021, there were 209 hires from this program with over 22% of the hires being women for data center operations represented globally. In 2021, more than 25% of Equinix’s data center operations external hires were sourced through this initiative.
- Military Program: In 2021, we hired 52 veterans globally through the program. Being that the military is one of the world’s most diverse organizations, recruiting through this pathway is a unique opportunity to attract skilled, passionate people from a wider talent pool. We are proud to maintain our Military Friendly Employer silver rating. We teamed up with Military Spouse Employment Partnership (MSEP) and Skillbridge bringing future veterans to the workplace for up to 6 months, preparing the future veteran with industry experience. This prepares the veteran for new career opportunities upon military retirement.
New to Career Program
Emphasizing and aligning to our DIB values and goals, developing toolkits for a year-round hiring cycle, and continually improving the design of our hiring processes has led to a more robust and effective New to Career Program and contributed to growing conversion rates for new to career hiring.
Highlights from the program in 2021 include:
- Conversion & Diversity: The program converted a gender-diverse talent pool of 51% females.
- Partnerships: We are partnering with our EECNs such as YoungProfessionalsConnect, BlackConnect and GenteConnect to increase our pipeline and hiring opportunities. The EECNs help bridge opportunities to their alma maters and networks, and members participate in recruitment events.
- UTS Lucy Mentoring program: In 2021, we completed the first year of our partnership with University Technology Sydney’s (UTS) Lucy Mentoring Program to support female engineering talent and have committed to continuing the program for at least two more years. In our pilot year, we welcomed the maximum six women to the inaugural cohort and in our second phase we will welcome thirteen.
Meaningful Work and Career Development
Onboarding
The “Discover Equinix” onboarding program quickly enables new members to positively contribute and feel like they are part of the team. The program uses a collection of fun and engaging activities that suit various learning styles, including multimedia resources, opportunities to network and build employee relationships, and self-learning and personal-reflection experiences. The program integrates with local onboarding programs to provide new employees with a seamless journey into local and global teams.
Redefining what it means to be a leader
In 2021, Equinix strengthened its commitment to transformational positive change–for its business, people and the world–through a renewed leadership brand. The leadership brand includes five specific behaviors that align to this purpose: ABCDI: Agile, Business-savvy, Collaborative, Decisive, and Inclusive. Adding Diversity and Inclusive leadership competencies and behaviors in our Leadership Success Profiles, which will be used in hiring and promotion discussions for VPs and above beginning in 2022, helps to recognize and incentivize these behaviors.
Training and Development
Our efforts toward learning and development reached new levels of engagement in 2021, even as we build out further elements of the program. We saw a total of 32,800 training hours across all our programs. Highlights from the year included:
- LinkedIn Learning: Available in multiple languages to all employees globally, this platform offers curated learning pathways and suggested training modules. In 2021, 98% of eligible users activated their LinkedIn Learning accounts, completed over 12,300 courses, viewed 334,000 videos with 53 active customized learning paths curated by all functions in the business, and logged over 18,600 hours of training. The platform saw a 24% monthly increase year-over-year in learners.
- Front Line Leader Program: This modular, cohort-based learning program first piloted in 2020 is targeted at developing leaders focusing on themes such as decision-making and leading inclusive teams. The global rollout of this program in 2021 saw over 300 managers participate, and ~95% of participants giving positive feedback of being willing to recommend the course to others. Additionally, self-assessments conducted after the program indicated a 15% increase in effectiveness.
- Leadership Development: Aspiring senior leaders have the opportunity to participate in our redesigned Archimedes Leadership Development Program when the program relaunches in 2022. In 2021, we worked to develop a new format to allow for a greater number of participants to solve real Equinix business challenges, gain exposure to Equinix executive leaders, learn the Equinix business model, and identify ways to grow their careers. A key feature of the new program will be greater alignment with the Equinix “Transformational Leader brand.”
Feedback and Coaching
Grow, Perform, Succeed (GPS) is our global approach to performance at Equinix. From Quarterly Conversations to year-end assessment and rewards, GPS is a cornerstone of how we align our work and our people in service to our business strategy, and it’s our way to support our employees’ personal and professional growth. Our performance management approach is aligned to the SMART goal model. It begins with goal setting in Q1, a progress review in Q2, an optional self-assessment in Q3, and an assessment by managers in Q4. During the Q4 Quarterly Conversations, managers and employees reflect together on the full year and provide future-focused feedback that can be used to start planning for the following year.
In 2021:
- Enterprise-wide, 71% of employees entered goals in the system
- 72% entered development actions
- 61% of eligible employees completed a self-assessment
- 43% of all global employees attended at least one of the courses on goals and/or quarterly conversations.
To continue improving employee engagement, we provided change management and e-learning, quick reference guides and applicable resources for employees and managers. We are also running four sessions of office hours per quarter for managers where a support team is available to address employees’ questions, and where we offer training on relevant topics such as setting SMART goals.
In 2021, we launched our 360-degree review tool and the ability to conduct these for mid-level leaders. The program continues building on the foundation of our leadership development approach and infrastructure, by realigning our leader success profiles to reflect what our renewed brand expects of our leaders. Additionally, in 2021, the Talent Development team continued working with our Allies Council to create and share content emphasizing the importance of setting SMART Goals.
Voice of the Employee
We continue to solicit feedback through short quarterly Pulse surveys that invite employees to share feedback on topics relating to our overall organizational strategy focusing on People, Organization and Culture. These surveys help us identify themes and potential challenges, as well as providing insight into differences in the employee experience, satisfaction and sense of belonging across gender (globally) and race/ethnicity in the U.S. Our employee satisfaction score of 83 as of Q4 2021 reflects the average response to the question: How happy are you working at Equinix? Despite slightly declining scores due to a combination of macro-level COVID-19 related factors leading to small declines in overall market averages, Equinix’s satisfaction score is above benchmark by 4 points and within the top 20th percentile of vendor’s clients. In 2021, 72% of employees responded that feedback they provide in Pulse surveys lead to positive improvements, and 80% of managers agreed that Pulse helps them to be a more effective manager.
Additionally, in 2021 we launched new hire and exit surveys to better understand the employee experience throughout the full employee lifecycle.