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Kendall Boyd, Manager of Inclusion and Employee Engagement, LG&E and KU
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The population isn’t made up of just one kind of person, and more and more companies understand that the workforce needs to reflect and mirror the population. Kendall Boyd, Manager of Inclusion and Employee Engagement for LG&E and KU, shares about how the organization continuously works toward this goal.
How is your DEI program structured?
While my focus is on staffing policies and processes, employee development and engagement, we want our DEI involvement to be embedded within the business and have a Supplier Diversity Program and Corporate Responsibility team that focuses on ensuring we encourage diverse spending and community support. From an employee standpoint, we also have Business Resource Groups that assist us in creating spaces for our diverse workforce to share experiences and encourage engagement across the enterprise.
What types of programming and outreach does your DEI team do?
We regularly participate in educational events at area middle and high schools, which frequently spotlight careers in the utility industry or in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) fields. These events often target students from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
We’re very intentional in ensuring supplier diversity. Our policy at LG&E and KU is to develop significant partnering relationships with diverse businesses and to maximize opportunities for them to participate with us as suppliers, contractors and subcontractors of goods and services.
We strongly encourage prime suppliers to provide equal opportunities to small business enterprises including minority-, women-, HUBZone, LGBTQ+, veteran-, and service-disabled, veteran-owned small business enterprises in the performance of their contracts.
How have DEI initiatives enhanced your workplace and overall success?
LG&E and KU, like much of the utility industry, has experienced significant workforce change, with a large number of employee retirements. This change in our workforce presents an opportunity to promote DEI by hiring and retaining talented and diverse employees.
Last summer’s local and national protests in response to the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd provided an opportunity for businesses to re-examine their commitment to racial equity and justice in their communities and among their employees.
What impact do you hope your program has on the city?
We strive to be a leader and a model for how DEI efforts can have a positive impact on our community. By demonstrating that DEI provides a platform for organizations to achieve long-term success, we hope our commitment inspires others to focus more on DEI and continues to foster a better, more inclusive environment in our city and across the communities we serve.
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