- We’ve rolled out programs that improve our benefits and reinforce our culture
- Lam remains committed to building a culture that is inclusive and diverse
In celebration of Global Diversity Awareness Month, we’re looking back at the steps we’ve taken to create a more inclusive and diverse culture – one that works better for everyone.
Leadership Accountability
Our commitment to inclusion and diversity (I&D) starts at the top. Leadership accountability and role modeling are integral to meeting this commitment, so this year, for the very first time, we asked every leader to set an inclusion goal as part of their performance and development plan. We formally cascaded inclusion goals to 100% of our people managers through our performance management system and have continued to promote them to newly promoted and new managers.
Additionally, just last month, we rolled out new executive and people manager training to further build and activate habits of inclusion in our leaders’ interactions with their teams. This investment in training builds on our workforce’s I&D education and understanding, and encourages deeper conversation, creating change throughout our organization.
Engaging our Workforce
In 2021, we further focused on I&D engagement by launching an Inclusion Index within our annual employee survey. The index represented the combined score of three survey questions that address equal opportunity, inclusion, and authenticity. This measurement holds us accountable by clearly assessing our progress and identifying opportunities for improvement. While these metrics are important, we also prioritize the individual experiences of those across our organization to inform our 2023 priorities.
To support our I&D vision, we have 16 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), communities that are made up of passionate employees that contribute to a thriving, inclusive, and diverse company culture. Our ERGs connect employees, provide learning and development opportunities, participate in mentoring programs, support recruitment, and engage in our local community. Just this year, we added the Lam Employee Sustainability Community, an ERG focused on educating our employee base on sustainability, and Women in Taiwan, a group connecting women from all business units across the country to inspire and educate each other. With thousands of employees joining our ERGs globally, I’m proud to share that just two years into our formal ERG journey, over 10% of our employee base have joined an ERG which is above Fortune 500 companies’ average in participation.
Increasing Diversity
Lam remains committed to attracting, retaining, and developing diverse talent to maintain our competitive edge. This year, we have engaged further with our I&D partner organizations. Here are some highlights so far:
- In August, we awarded $100,000 to the United Negro College Foundation (UNCF), funding 20 new scholarships at UNCF schools, including historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
- We also deepened our partnership with the National Consortium of Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering (GEM), a premier organization for the best and brightest underrepresented minority STEM talent in the U.S. This year, for the 2022-2023 school year, we increased the number of GEM fellowships we funded from 13 to 20. I’m proud to share that our leaders have engaged with GEM, with Lam’s chief communications officer, Stacey MacNeil, stepping up to serve as a board member.
- Finally, we attended our first in-person Grace Hopper Celebration, the premier conference in the U.S. for women in technology, bringing together our employees across our global sites, ERGs, and job functions. I’m also proud to share that leaders within Lam, including, Soon Kuek, general manager of Lam’s operations in Malaysia, Lubab Sheet-Davis, vice-president of Strategy and Innovation, and Alyson Crafton, head of the Global Information Systems’ Common Services Organization, hosted a workshop titled, “Unlocking Barriers to Innovation,” engaging more than 200+ Grace Hopper attendees.
In September 2021, Mary Hassett, our chief human resources officer, announced enhancements to the U.S. parental leave policy to give birth mothers up to six months of paid leave, and 16 paid weeks for all other new parents. This year, we expanded our parental leave policies globally, providing benefits to our employees where it really matters.
In March, we rolled out our student loan assistance program which aims to support all our U.S. employees in actively investing in their future.
Through these programs, and other long-standing efforts, we’ve been able to transform the make-up of our population, increasing the representation of most underrepresented groups year over year.
Sharing Progress
While this is just a snapshot, I encourage you to read our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report, to further explore our initiatives, data, and stories. We realize that we go further together with our partners, so we continue to submit our program metrics to equality benchmarks and indexes including, the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index (CEI), McKinsey & Company’s Women in the Workplace study, Bloomberg’s Gender-Equality Index (GEI), and more, to let us know where we’ve made progress and where there’s room for improvement.
I&D is a journey, and I am proud of the impact we’ve made to move the needle forward.