Social Responsibility

OPERATING SAFELY

Perhaps the most fundamental characteristic of our culture at Weyerhaeuser is our deep commitment to the safety of our people. For us, safety is a core value and comes first in everything we do. Our goal is to eliminate all serious, life-altering injuries from our workplace on our journey to injury-free, and we have made significant improvements over many decades. In 2020, serious employee injuries were down 60 percent compared with 2019, and the severity of those injuries was down 35 percent. Our contractor safety performance also improved in 2020, with the number of serious contractor injuries down 57 percent versus the previous year. Any injury is one too many for us, but we are pleased with the progress we have made to mitigate our highest-risk areas and reduce the number of injuries our people experience at work.  

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Building An Inclusive Culture

The urgency of our inclusion work has never been greater, and we are taking real action to increase diversity at all levels of our company, create a truly inclusive environment, and secure, preserve and promote equity for all people — both within our operations and in our communities.   

Diverse companies are more successful; this is clear from the research. Every year, more studies reinforce the connection between workplace diversity and financial success, and diverse companies are also more innovative, which drives ongoing improvement and competitive advantage. Companies that focus on improving diversity also play a critical role in society by creating opportunities for traditionally excluded individuals to prosper, and by raising awareness about the importance of equity and inclusion in the workplace.   

We know that improving in this area requires so much more than recruiting diverse talent — we must also build a culture that compels people to stay once they join our team. That is why inclusion is a core value at Weyerhaeuser. Our Inclusion Council of 20 diverse employees from all corners of our company regularly provides insights and recommendations to our senior management team, and based on their input, we work to set goals and drive improvement in seven key areas each year: leadership and accountability; equitable practices and policies; recruiting and hiring; training and development; communication and culture; affinity and connection; and community outreach.  

In 2020, we made significant progress against our targets, which included educating our top leaders about inclusive leadership and the importance of fostering a sense of belonging, deploying facilitator-led unconscious bias training to all salaried employees, removing names from resumes at the first stage of applicant review, setting expectations for establishing diverse hiring teams, launching an internal inclusion blog and a series of stories on our internal news center called “Amplifying Awareness,” adding multiple inclusion questions to our annual employee feedback survey, refreshing our approach to employee resource groups, and donating $100,000 to organizations supporting social and racial justice.  

Excluding temporary hires and part-time employees, 40 percent of our new hires in the U.S. in 2020 met our diversity criteria for race, ethnicity, gender and disability status. And in response to our 2020 feedback survey, 82 percent of our employees agreed that their work environment is inclusive and the company is committed to making progress on diversity and inclusion.  

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DEVELOPING OUR PEOPLE

Our employees want to work for a company that cares about their professional growth, and we want people on our team who strive to continually learn and grow throughout their careers.   

To facilitate that growth, we offer three leadership development programs, one for each level of leadership: front-line, midlevel and executive. In 2020, we had to delay or shift some of these programs to a virtual format because of COVID-19 health and safety considerations; after we made those adjustments, more than 100 leaders were able to participate. To further help our leaders support their teams through the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, we developed “Leading Through Uncertainty” training, and we also organized several virtual seminars on managing stress and work-life balance. Nearly 600 employees took advantage of these offerings. In addition, our employees logged more than 31,000 hours of training in our online learning management system, which tracks both virtual and classroom courses delivered.  

We also place strong emphasis on individual development planning, and in 2020 about 95 percent of our salaried employees updated their career plans despite all the disruptions from the pandemic. In 2021, we also launched a new toolkit for employees and managers to help drive more meaningful and constructive career-coaching conversations. This toolkit includes expanded access to a wide range of online training modules that support individual professional-development needs, as well as a peer-to-peer recommendation list of books, podcasts and videos that support ongoing learning and growth.  

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COMPETITIVE PEOPLE PRACTICES 

Beyond building a culture of safety, development and inclusion, we also focus on providing competitive pay and benefits that will attract the best talent, and then measuring the success of our culture and programs through regular feedback and pulse surveys.   

In 2019, we were one of the first companies in our industry to offer paid parental leave; all U.S. nonunion employees may take up to four weeks of fully paid leave upon the arrival of a new child or children in their family (our Canadian employees receive parental leave in accordance with provincial employment standards). This is in addition to our current six-week disability leave for birth mothers, our adoption assistance program and other family-related benefits.  

In 2020, we were one of the first companies to implement stringent COVID-19 safety protocols to help protect our frontline workers, and to ask our salaried employees to work from home for the duration of the pandemic. In 2021, we announced a longer-term remote work policy that promotes accommodating as much flexibility as possible for workers who are able to work from home, while still connecting in person often enough to meet critical business and culture needs.   

As part of our ongoing commitment to listen and respond to employee concerns, in 2020 we conducted our annual employee feedback survey to gauge responses to a range of workforce factors that drive engagement and retention. Our overall engagement score was 85 percent, with 87 percent of our employees believing their work has meaning and purpose, 92 percent saying they’re proud of the work they do, and 86 percent agreeing they have the training they need to do their jobs well.  

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SUPPORTING OUR COMMUNITIES

We operate in rural communities across North America, and we are proud to give our time and money to help ensure they are thriving places to live and work. In 2020, we provided $5.3 million in charitable grants, in-kind donations and sponsorships in our communities, and our employees led 176 community projects and volunteered over 13,000 hours of their time to causes they care about. Through our companywide employee giving platform, we provide an easy way for all employees to donate to their favorite charities using payroll deduction. In 2019, we also added a company matching program of up to $1,000 per employee, and in 2020 we matched more than $279,000 in employee donations to double the support for deserving charities in our communities.  

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ENGAGING OUR STAKEHOLDERS  

Our commitment to citizenship goes beyond charitable giving and volunteerism. For us, being a good corporate citizen is also about listening to our neighbors and partners — and working to ensure our company is fully engaged in the communities where we live and work. Our engagement process varies widely based on the project, issue or group, and our stakeholders and partners include everyone from customers and suppliers to investors, employees, communities, policymakers and regulators, Indigenous communities, NGOs and nonprofits, universities and research projects.  

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PROMOTING ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION 

Drawing on more than a century of experience in sustainable forestry, we share our story and expertise through tours of our forests and facilities across North America, and we also operate two centers that are open to the public and provide a range of experiential opportunities to learn about forestry, ecology and environmental issues. In Washington, our Mount St. Helens Forest Learning Center is full of exhibits that tell the story of Mount St. Helens and the return of the forest through interactive, hands-on activities and visual displays. In North Carolina, our Cool Springs Environmental Education Center offers a 1,700-acre working forest and outdoor classroom for visitors — including school groups — to explore forestry working in harmony with wildlife habitat, air quality, water quality and recreational activities.  

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PROVIDING RECREATIONAL ACCESS

Our millions of acres of timberlands in the U.S. include spectacular lakes and hardwood forests in the Northeast, expansive Southern pine forests spanning from Virginia to Texas and remote, rugged mountains and scenic rivers in the Pacific Northwest. Whether your passion is birdwatching, hunting, fishing, camping, hiking or cycling, our forests provide exceptional opportunities for outdoor adventure, and we are proud to connect people with everything nature has to offer through our lease and permit programs and open access areas.  

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