Case study: How MPC promotes workplace diversity

What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2019 Sustainability Report MPC identified a range of material issues, such as business ethics and accountability, water use and conservation, cybersecurity, spill prevention, workforce safety, air quality and emissions. Among these, promoting workplace diversity stands out as a key material issue for MPC.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards              

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups MPC engages with: 

To identify and prioritise material topics MPC engaged with its stakeholders through the following channels:

What actions were taken by MPC to promote workplace diversity?

In its 2019 Sustainability Report MPC reports that it took the following actions for promoting workplace diversity:

• Building awareness
• MPC regularly hosts D&I workshops and employee-led panels, and also develops training programmes, often with the support of its Employee Network Groups. In its communities, MPC engages in outreach and participates in community-led diversity celebrations and educational events. To ensure success, MPC also reinforces its value of inclusion through active engagement from its leaders, who provide individual mentoring to employees. Additionally, MPC provides peer support and development programmes, and reviews participation rates to avoid disparate representation. MPC’s Employee Networks are critical contributors to its employees feeling engaged and included, so MPC has incorporated communications from its networks into the onboarding process for new employees. MPC also periodically performs targeted D&I assessments to identify areas for improvement.

• Increasing diverse representation
• Increasing diverse representation throughout its workforce is MPC’s primary D&I objective. MPC vigilantly monitors its progress, provides quarterly updates and engages in ongoing dialogue with its leadership team. As part of its Diversity Improvement Plan launched in 2019, MPC enhanced its talent acquisition practices to reflect its commitment to diverse candidates in the hiring process. With the support of executive leaders, MPC extended its balanced slate approach to all positions at manager level and higher, which means that MPC uses its best efforts to include at least one qualified individual who is female or from a racial or ethnic minority group in the final candidate pool. These efforts are coupled with additional hiring process enhancements, such as providing training to avoid unconscious bias in hiring, ensuring diversity on all hiring and interviewing teams, requiring internal and external postings of positions, and leveraging MPC’s Employee Network Groups.

• Launching Employee Networks
• In June 2019, MPC launched its Employee Networks across the organisation. These networks focus on six populations: Asian, Black, Hispanic, Veterans, Women and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer). All networks encourage ally membership. Over their first six months, MPC’s Employee Networks quickly expanded to 54 total network chapters across 79% of its locations, with over 1,900 employees participating. This broad support extends also to leaders throughout MPC, with each Employee Network represented by two active executive sponsors. The sponsors meet regularly to share updates, gain alignment, build deeper connections across networks and pursue collaboration ideas. MPC’s Employee Networks not only provide opportunities for its employees to make meaningful and supportive connections, but also serve a significant role in its D&I strategy.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standard addressed in this case is: Disclosure 405-1 Diversity of governance bodies and employees

Disclosure 405-1 Diversity of governance bodies and employees corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality
• Targets: 5.1, 5.5
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.5

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by MPC, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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