With our diversity and inclusion efforts being a central component of our corporate culture, Equitrans aspires to cultivate a workplace of respect, trust, and teamwork. It is our belief that to be successful, we must value the diversity of backgrounds and views of all stakeholders, and it is important that we celebrate our differences, as we believe diversity propels our Company toward innovation and long-term, sustainable success.
Supporting An Inclusive Work Environment
3-3
Management of material topics
405-1
11.11.4
Diversity of governance bodies and employees
405-2
11.11.5
Ratio of basic salary and remuneration
3-3
405-1
405-2
Our commitment to diversity and inclusion (D&I) is evident throughout all aspects of our business. We are committed to D&I because we know that our various backgrounds and experiences make us stronger and propels our Company toward innovation and long-term, sustainable success. Equitrans values and respects the well-being and work ethic of all employees involved with our business, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or status as a disabled veteran or veteran of the Vietnam Era. Our goal is to ensure that all voices are heard and that everyone has an opportunity to succeed. To further support our efforts, Equitrans’ Chairman and Chief Executive Officer signed the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion Coalition's CEO Pledge, which outlines the actions CEOs across all industries have agreed to take to strengthen diversity and inclusion in their organizations.
Together with Equitrans’ leadership team, our Chief Human Resources Officer and Director of Human Resources and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion oversee diversity and inclusion efforts across the organization. We believe our Inclusion Program and corporate policies cultivate an inclusive, respectful work environment that values differing perspectives and encourages the power of teamwork. Through our Inclusion Program, Equitrans is also focused on advancing our recruitment and retention processes. This includes recruiting, developing, retaining, and advancing employees from a range of backgrounds, including minorities, females, LGBTQ+, veterans, and persons with physical, intellectual, or developmental disabilities.
Our inclusion efforts also take into account leadership education, employee engagement, facility accessibility, and ensuring our policies support an inclusive work environment. The goal of this formal program is to aid Equitrans in being a diverse organization where all employees feel included and are engaged to do their best work each day.
During 2021, our program focused on building awareness of various inclusion-related topics. Each month we highlighted a specific D&I topic, which helped to educate and inform employees of the importance of understanding and supporting an inclusive workplace. We also enhanced D&I awareness through other initiatives, including a Pronouns Matter Campaign regarding the use of employees’ preferred pronouns; and hosting eight virtual D&I presentations with special guest speakers, which, collectively, were attended by more than 750 employees.
We also provide employees with other learning opportunities, including access to Blue Ocean Brain, a micro-eLearning platform that promotes inclusion-related content to employees and managers via bi-weekly emails, along with training for managers on how to conduct courageous and often difficult conversations regarding D&I topics. In addition, we required all employees and managers to complete unconscious bias training and, in early 2022, we offered disability awareness training for managers. Enhancing D&I awareness is a process of continuous improvement, and Equitrans is committed to identifying and evaluating new programs, processes, and training opportunities to improve our D&I efforts.
Our Workforce Diversity
We take pride in Equitrans’ ability to create a diverse workforce where every employee feels safe, valued, and respected — and we recognize there is always room for improvement. To hold ourselves accountable and ensure we are always acting with employees’ best interests in mind, we manage and measure our improvement through the demographical representation of our workforce. These metrics include gender and ethnicity representation, number of promotions of women and minorities, and number of women and minorities in leadership positions, as well as attendance at inclusion-related educational sessions and participation in online learning content and live inclusion training sessions. With minimal employee turnover in 2021, there was little change in our male to female ratio and manager and demographic breakdowns.
Employee Demographics
Employees by Gender
Target
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
800
78%
22%
777
77%
23%
766
76%
24%
2019
2020
2021
Male
Female
Employees by Ethnicity
Target
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
800
94.88%
1.87%
1.50%
1.00%
0.50%
0.25%
777
94.59%
2.06%
1.29%
1.29%
0.51%
0.26%
766
94.26%
2.35%
1.31%
1.30%
0.52%
0.26%
2019
2020
2021
White
Black or African American
Hispanic or Latino
Asian
Two or More Races
American Indian or Alaska Native
Employees by Age Group
Target
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
800
11%
63%
26%
777
8%
67%
25%
766
6%
66%
28%
2019
2020
2021
<30 Years Old
30–50 Years Old
>50 Years Old
Manager Demographics1
1) For purposes of this report, Equitrans defines “manager” as any employee having one or more direct reports
Managers by Gender
Target
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
164
79%
21%
155
78%
22%
164
78%
22%
2019
2020
2021
Male
Female
Managers by Ethnicity
Target
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
164
96.34%
0.61%
1.83%
0.61%
0.61%
0%
155
96.24%
0.63%
1.87%
0.63%
0.63%
0%
164
96.34%
0.61%
1.83%
0.61%
0.61%
0.00%
2019
2020
2021
White
Black or African American
Hispanic or Latino
Asian
Two or More Races
American Indian or Alaska Native
Managers by Age Group
Target
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
164
2%
69%
29%
155
0%
69%
31%
164
0%
61%
39%
2019
2020
2021
<30 Years Old
30–50 Years Old
>50 Years Old
Pay and Equity
We understand that fairly compensating our employees is essential for attracting and retaining talent that is critical to our Company’s continued success. We evaluate market trends on at least an annual basis to ensure we are offering competitive pay to all of our employees. We also collect detailed pay data to understand pay equity across Equitrans’ various levels and job categories. We support the need for pay equity, and reviewing our gender pay data allows us to evaluate our performance and identify any gaps to ensure equitable pay across our organization.
Average Annual Base Salary – Female-to-Male Ratio (Year-End 2020 and 2021) by Organization Level1
100%
Executive and Senior Level Managers2021
116%
2020
117%
First and Mid-Level Managers2021
100%
2020
96%
Professionals2021
81%
2020
82%
Technicians2021
93%
2020
93%
Administrative Support Workers2021
91%
2020
89%
Craft Workers2021
100%
2020
94%
Female vs. Male Average Annual Base Salary (Female to Male Ratio, Year-End 2021)
100%
Executive and Senior Level Managers
117%
First and Mid-Level Managers
96%
Professionals
82%
Technicians
93%
Administrative Support Workers
89%
Craft Workers
94%
1) For purposes of this report, the organization level is categorized in accordance with the Equal Employment Opportunity classifications
Evaluating Our Inclusion Initiatives
Equitrans is an equal opportunity employer and follows all applicable laws in this regard. We dedicate time to train our managers and employees on diversity and inclusion, routinely inspect our offices to identify potential accessibility gaps, and routinely evaluate and update our policies to ensure they support an inclusive work environment. During 2021, the Company did not receive any reports alleging discrimination.
Equitrans’ Inclusion Program increases our ability to track and monitor meaningful metrics and educate employees on D&I. We collect employee data through our human resources information system (HRIS), and we gather specific contractor information through our contract workforce management system to track the impact of our initiatives. Although we know that we still have work to do to achieve our D&I goals, we are committed to listening to our employees and taking action to make Equitrans a place where everyone feels welcome, supported, and can be their authentic selves.
We prepare a quarterly Human Resources Scorecard for our Board members that tracks our employee diversity and inclusion metrics, such as gender, ethnicity, age, and diversity initiatives. In 2021, we published a quarterly internal Diversity and Inclusion Dashboard, which is intended as a measure for us to be transparent with employees about our internal demographic information. These include:
Total representation of minorities and minorities in leadership roles
Total representation of women and women in leadership roles
Total promotions that are of women and minorities
Total new-hires that are women and minorities
Percentage of older workers, veterans, and individuals with disabilities
We apply a similar approach with regards to supplier diversity, and we believe the perspectives obtained through the inclusion of companies of varying backgrounds in our supply chain position the organization as a more effective business, capable of impacting a wider range of communities, and provide greater opportunity to limit the Company’s exposure to supply chain disruption. We strive to give voice and value to minority and locally owned businesses. When recruiting a third-party vendor, Equitrans places a high value on hiring from Minority-Owned Business Enterprises (MBE), Veteran-Owned Businesses (VOB), and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (WBE), and we continuously identify ways to support and celebrate minority vendors by seeking a more diverse supply base. More information is available on the Supply Chain & Human Rights section of this report.
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Storage Integrity Management
To fulfill specific regulatory obligations by government agencies, Equitrans conducts annual audits and inspections required by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and respective state agencies that oversee pipelines and related facilities. To reinforce the importance of public safety, in recent years PHMSA has conducted focused audits on Storage Integrity Management programs. These very intense, detailed audits emphasize both public safety and the environmental impacts of storage methane release. Among other benefits to the industry, this level of scrutiny provides an opportunity for natural gas pipeline operators to review, improve, and strengthen their programs.
Under PHMSA’s direction, Equitrans conducted numerous storage audits from 2018 through 2021 to gauge the strength of our Storage Integrity Management Plan (SIMP) and its adherence to published code. While there were no penalties assessed as a result of these audit activities, Equitrans did receive varying degrees of citations (i.e., Letters of Concern, Warning Letters, and Notices of Amendment) that required us to update our plans, policies, and procedures to enhance our SIMP.
In addition to addressing all cited deficiencies to improve the SIMP, Equitrans instituted the following enhancements to its storage operations:
Mitigation of risk by increasing the frequency of well-surveillance logging to every seven years, versus the previous schedule of every 15 years
Utilization of Remote Terminal Units on storage wells for 24-hour monitoring by gas control
Development and implementation of storage-specific procedures to standardize storage maintenance and operations activities across the Company
Dedicating personnel trained specifically for storage operations
As with all of Equitrans’ pipeline integrity programs, our primary focus is on safety — above all else — for our communities, employees, and pipeline facilities. The continued and enhanced safe operation of our storage assets is merely an extension of Equitrans’ overall commitment to safety.
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Emergency Response and Preparedness
In August 2021, flammable vapors from a tank vent ignited during a late afternoon electrical storm at the Equitrans Twilight Compressor Station, a natural gas gathering facility located in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Upon notification of the incident, the Equitrans crisis team quickly convened — no injuries were reported, and no significant damage occurred.
As part of our response, Equitrans technicians were immediately dispatched and, once on site, began to implement necessary safety procedures, including the closing of appropriate valves to isolate the tank. In addition, the local volunteer fire department was on site to assist with appropriate fire safety protocols.
Equitrans’ emergency procedures and closing of valves successfully allowed the flame to self-extinguish, and within a short time the tank was fully isolated. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection was notified, and, as a courtesy, local township officials and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission received notification of the incident.
Working together with the crisis team, our operations, safety, and compliance teams determined that the ignition occurred as a result of a lightning strike that ignited vapors from a malfunctioning tank vent. After reviewing and understanding the cause of the incident, operations worked with engineering to identify and inspect similar tank vents, as well as tank grounding, to minimize the risk of similar incidents from occurring in the future.
Equitrans Midstream supports the development of a sustainable workforce, which we believe is a key element for the long-term success of our Company and our communities. Preparing local students to compete in the workforce is a funding priority of the Equitrans Midstream Foundation — connecting students now with the tools they need to make positive social and economic contributions in the future. Through our E-Train On-Track committee, we also support employee volunteerism and encourage employees to donate their time in support of community-based educational initiatives.
The Education Partnership is a local non-profit organization that distributes school and classroom supplies at no cost to students and teachers in need. When the organization approached us with an opportunity to provide assistance and support for Pennsylvania schools, ranging from pre-K through grade 12, we enthusiastically volunteered both our funding and time. In 2021, through a $32,000 grant to The Education Partnership’s Adopt-a-School program, the Equitrans Midstream Foundation purchased essential school supplies for students in three southwestern Pennsylvania schools. Using our Volunteer Paid-Time-Off Program, these funds were amplified by Equitrans employees who volunteered their time to assemble more than 1,230 Power Tools Homework Kits for distribution to the students. A team of employees then attended assemblies at one of the participating high schools to conduct mini-educational sessions to discuss jobs and careers in the energy industry.
During the past two years, the Foundation has awarded $50,000 to The Education Partnership. By combining proposed funding opportunities with employee volunteerism, Equitrans can provide a greater level of community support, while at the same time encouraging employee involvement and increasing overall engagement. Our work with The Education Partnership is one example of Equitrans’ commitment to the communities in which we live and work — delivering positive impacts through both financial support and employee volunteerism.
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Distracted Driving Awareness
Distracted driving is an important safety issue — whether we are traveling for work or transporting friends and family during our personal time. The tragic results of distracted driving can happen to any one of us, anywhere, and at any time. Furthermore, these distractions come in many forms and can be caused by a number of factors, such as driving while using a communications device, tending to others who are in the vehicle, using your vehicle’s audio system, or simply observing scenery as we pass it on the road.
In response to an increase in preventable vehicle accidents in 2020, Equitrans’ safety team created a Safe Driving Stand-Up, whereby supervisors were tasked with encouraging their teams to focus on changing their driving behaviors to better ensure everyone’s safety. In 2021, we placed additional emphasis on vehicle driving safety through our Companywide Distracted Driving Awarenessinitiative, which included encouraging employees to sign a distracted driving pledge as a symbol of their commitment to drive safely, be in the moment, and remain focused on the task-at-hand.
With more than 500 employees in attendance, Equitrans’ Distracted Driving Awareness campaign kicked off with a presentation by Joel Feldman, renowned distracted driver speaker. Mr. Feldman is an attorney from Philadelphia who, despite representing those impacted by distracted driving crashes, frequently drove distracted himself. Following the death of his daughter in an accident caused by a distracted driver, he changed the way he drives and the way he thinks about driving safety. In 2011, he founded EndDD.org (End Distracted Driving) and spends the majority of his professional time working to educate people about this issue — with the goal to reduce distracted driving incidents of all kinds.
Mr. Feldman shared some very powerful and personal messaging, along with several important reminders that focused on how to change driving behaviors to better ensure one’s personal safety, the safety of their passengers, as well as the safety of everyone on the road. In addition, the Equitrans Midstream Foundation expanded these important safe driving messages by partnering with EndDD to bring Mr. Feldman’s presentation to four local high schools in our Pennsylvania operating area.
In 2022, our Foundation is pleased to continue its partnership with EndDD by supporting the creation of a nationwide public service campaign geared toward preventing distracted driving among high school students.
Equitrans believes that having a safe-driving mindset should extend beyond the workplace, and we want our employees to be equipped to prevent distractions while driving for both work and personal travel. With safety as our top priority and number one Core Value, the more we share the importance of learning how to NOT DRIVE DISTRACTED, the safer all of us will be.
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Culture Change Belongs to All of Us
Our goal is to create a workforce culture that is not only aligned with our values, but also inspires employees to be their best selves. Based on the findings of our initial culture assessment conducted in 2020, we implemented several culture enhancing initiatives that were aligned with our mission, vision, and strategy — including redesigning our employee recognition program, introducing 360-degree management assessments and coaching, and launching an on-demand learning platform.
In 2021, we conducted our second culture survey, which had a 78% participation rate and highlighted significant, double-digit percentile increases across all 48 culture survey questions. In conjunction with our Culture Champions Group, we attribute these culture score improvements to the many action items we implemented since conducting our previous assessment.
The survey platform we utilize measures organizations across four areas: Mission, Consistency, Involvement, and Adaptability. While we were encouraged by the results, we also recognize there are areas that require continued focus to improve our culture. Below are a few key highlights from our recent survey:
Leveraging Our Strengths
We are very strong in the areas of teamwork and agreement — illustrating strong coordination across departments, the elimination of silos, and alignment with our Core Values, which highlights a strong sense of right and wrong.
We had positive shifts in how we use our Core Values to guide our decisions & the perceptions of leaders who demonstrate these values.
We scored near the 95th percentile on most of the safety aspects, something we are very proud of as we continue to elevate our strong safety culture.
Taking Action
Based on the opportunities for improvement, we are implementing several action items that are linked to three primary focus areas:
Customer Focus: The best way to define Customer Focus is with a question — “When we get a request from a fellow employee, do we treat that request as if it came from a customer?” The success of our Company depends on all employees — from maintaining safe operations, ensuring system reliability, and designing system enhancements to closing our books, scheduling projects, running payroll, and managing our legal and regulatory concerns. As we strive to be a reliable partner inside and out, in 2022 we added customer service to our Core Value of Collaboration; and we are implementing initiatives to improve our internal customer service and ensure the timely exchange of information requests.
Strategic Direction & Intent: Employees understand the importance of connecting the dots between our strategy and their day-to-day work. Based on survey feedback, we will continue to publish our quarterly Strategic Priorities Update and schedule all-employee meetings to communicate progress on our Company’s annual priorities and objectives, which helps employees to align their individual objectives. Achieving our Company goals takes teamwork, collaboration, and individual contributions by everyone.
Capability Development: As people leaders, we want to take a more active role in the development of our employees, helping them to understand and explore opportunities for advancement. To support our managers, we rolled out training during 2022 to assist managers in having effective career conversations with employees, encouraging an open dialogue on opportunities for growth and skill development. We also updated our Core Value of Excellence to include employee capability development — reinforcing the importance of helping to improve the capabilities of our employees as a competitive advantage.
At Equitrans, culture change belongs to all of us, and each employee plays a vital role in achieving our vision of becoming the premier midstream company in North America. Our employees’ continued commitment to E-Train’s success is demonstrated by staying the course — effectively managing our business and running our operations safely, efficiently, and responsibly.
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Protecting Our Critical Energy Infrastructure
With cyber-attacks on the rise in nearly every industry sector, including those related to oil/gas pipelines, there is a heightened need for teamwork and collaboration to protect our nation’s energy infrastructure. We recognize the important joint efforts of pipeline operators, government agencies, vendors, and industry groups in developing solutions to combat the complex challenges of an ever-changing cybersecurity landscape. The formation of this alliance is based on a common goal: keeping our critical infrastructure safe, secure, and reliable.
To ensure adequate resources and elevate the criticality of our industry’s cyber initiatives, Chief Executive Officers and Chief Information Officers from our nation’s major pipeline operators, as well as top leaders from various government agencies are aligned on this priority. In addition, with this level of attention and focus on cybersecurity, responsibility has gone beyond Information Technology personnel. To be truly effective, cybersecurity requires multi-disciplinary leadership involvement from other business functions, such as physical security, emergency management, facilities, legal, and supply chain.
As a natural gas pipeline operator, Equitrans Midstream transports roughly 10% of U.S. natural gas production every day, making it critical for us to know and understand the latest threat intelligence. With the knowledge gained through these industry and government relationships, we are better prepared to implement leading practices designed to counter evolving attack vectors.
“At Equitrans Midstream, we believe forming a cybersecurity partnership has helped raise the security bar across the industry, resulting in a collective benefit that is beyond what any individual pipeline operator could achieve. By working together on cybersecurity initiatives, we are striving to make the natural gas pipeline sector more secure, while at the same time continuing to provide the critical energy resources on which our nation relies.”
– Carmine Fantini, CIO, Equitrans Midstream
The continued evolution of cybersecurity threats demands a holistic response from industry, government, and suppliers. Equitrans recognizes this reality, and we work diligently every day to enhance our strong public/private sector alliance — strengthening our capabilities to protect our critical energy infrastructure.
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Workplace Modernization
Recognizing the potential benefits of a flexible work model, Equitrans conducted a workplace modernization survey in June 2020, whereby office-based employees were asked to rank their workplace preferences based on a set of three “workplace personas” (anchor, flex, and remote). The next step in the process was for managers to review all positions in their departments and assign a workplace persona, or personas, to each position, based on the defined requirements of role. The final step was for employees to select their workplace persona based on the persona(s) assigned to their role.
Our workplace modernization activities, however, did not end there. As we and other companies prepared for the new normal of a larger remote workforce, E-Train recognized there would be concerns to address and conflicts to resolve — and our goal was to ensure a smooth transition as overall workplace plans were finalized. To replace our previous Telecommuting Policy, we implemented a new Workplace Modernization Policy, which includes topics such as workplace persona guidelines, relocation approval process, business travel expense protocol, and how to formally request a workplace persona assignment change.
Additionally, to assist our employees with changes related to our return-to-office (RTO), we communicated workspace scheduling information and general tax expectations (for remote employees), and created two RTO Guides:
The RTO Guide for Managers was intended to help managers prepare for working with their teams in the new era of a “distributed environment.” The guide contains key details for managing successfully in a distributed environment, including tips for utilizing shared workspaces; how to determine when it may be most effective for a manager and their team to work in the office; and how a manager can partner with their team to establish best practices and facilitate a collaborative and engaging working environment — ensuring continued performance in line with our Core Value of Excellence. Managers were asked to maintain an inclusive, forward-thinking environment that values the person as a whole instead of focusing on only the work that they produce and were reminded to always place safety first.
The RTO Guide for Employees contained FAQs about workplace personas; tips and recommended etiquette for working in a shared workspace; how to determine when it may be most effective to work in the office; best practices to ensure success; and the importance of keeping safety our top priority.
With the reopening of our offices in April 2022, roughly 61% of office-based employees are working remotely (remote persona), 37% split their time between remote and at an Equitrans location (flex persona), and 2% are working in the office full-time (anchor persona). We expect our workplace modernization model to improve employee satisfaction and retention, expand our talent pool, and create additional flexibility for our employees, while promoting continued business execution.
