Our Focus
Promoting a Vibrant, Inclusive Workplace
We're focused on building a more diverse and inclusive culture. Although we've set goals and made some progress, more still needs to be done. We have an opportunity to lead and make significant change.
Diversity & Inclusion
Altria’s diversity and inclusion vision is to seek and value differences with our people, communities and suppliers to drive our success.
Each of us brings our own point of view to work: one that is shaped by our education, family and life experiences as well as our age, gender identity, race and sexual orientation. When we value these differences, we solve business problems and create a more inclusive workplace.
In 2018, we made progress toward our goals with an intentional focus on public commitments, transparency, mitigating unconscious bias, accountability and advancing our culture of inclusion:
Our new CEO, Howard Willard, re-signed the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge initially signed by his predecessor, Marty Barrington. He also signed the Catalyst CEO Champions for Change pledge. These initiatives publicly commit Altria to advancing diversity, inclusion and gender equality within our business. We shared all of our companies’ diversity data with employees, to introduce more transparency around our diversity data. We rolled out "Decide" – an unconscious bias training that includes workshops for people managers and digital learning for individual contributors. We hosted various "D&I Convos." D&I Convos are a series of courageous conversations that directly and transparently explore how D&I impacts our ability to remain relevant to evolving employee and consumer expectations.
Innovation
Innovation is more than just bringing products to market. Innovation also includes bringing new ideas, efficiencies and improvements to the jobs we’re already doing.
Being agile is about bringing innovation to life by moving quickly, pushing boundaries, empowering our people and working in new ways. To achieve this cultural transformation, it will take all employees being willing to drive new ways of thinking, challenging the status quo and acting boldly.
Our recent progress:
In 2018, we created a new structure and teams designed to accelerate our innovation pipeline, continue to maximize our robust core business, and enhance focus, role clarity and speed in decision making. We appointed a Chief Growth Officer to pursue strategic and innovative growth priorities apart from our current structure, that are better aligned with our dual strategies of maximizing income from our core tobacco businesses while also growing new income streams. We also appointed a Chief Transformation Officer, who also serves as our Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer, to guide us through transforming our business, culture, and talent. Aligning our transformation and diversity and inclusion efforts ensures our focus on people and change is fully integrated into the changes we are undertaking to win in the future.
Attracting, Developing & Retaining Talent
In 2018, our companies’ investment
$14.7
Million
in training and development programs.
Employees want challenging, meaningful work. They want to make decisions that matter, while developing their careers. We provide these opportunities, including paid internships and diverse assignments designed to stretch capability.
Recruiting
 We recruit people with strong leadership potential. Our companies have longstanding recruiting relationships with about 19 universities nationwide. Each year, we offer students paid co-ops or internships and many of these interns begin their careers with Altria after they graduate. Our university recruiting is complemented by our efforts to hire experienced employees with demonstrated leadership capabilities.
Development
We work in highly competitive, regulated industries. Our development programs prepare our employees to take on complex business challenges.
When employees join our companies, they have immediate access to development resources. Employees receive ongoing feedback from their managers about their development, performance, and career advancement and growth opportunities.
Rewarding & Recognizing Employees
Altria and its companies offer some of the most comprehensive and competitive benefits within the Fortune 500.*
Our compensation program helps us attract, retain and motivate world-class talent. Depending on level, total compensation includes different elements – base pay, annual cash incentives, long-term stock and cash incentives and benefits.
Our goal is to provide total compensation packages between the 50th and 75th percentile of our peer companies. In 2018, we improved and added new benefits based on employee feedback:
Providing employees at all levels annual incentive compensation Increasing the company incentive award amount for healthcare savings accounts Conducting webinars to educate employees on benefit offerings, as well as piloting meditation and mindfulness sessions Adding new voluntary benefits such as pet insurance, hospital indemnity and legal services Increasing transparence into compensation. Enhancing severance and pension plans to allow for early retirement at age 50.
Our employee recognition program empowers employees to acknowledge the superior work of their peers. Whether it comes as just a note or as more tangible recognition, we promote an environment of acknowledging hard work and results. In 2018, we launched a new recognition system called Snap that gives all employees a monthly point budget that they can use to instantly recognize their peers.
Creating a Safe Workplace
Our safety goal is simple – we want all employees to have an injury-free career. We’re committed to occupational injury and illness prevention and to full compliance with laws and regulations relating to employee safety and health.
We continually update our policies, procedures and equipment as new developments occur in safety and health standards, as advances are made in technology and as market conditions change. Achieving this goal requires each employee to commit to an injury-free career by complying with safety requirements, performing job duties in a safe manner, and watching those around them each day.
95%
Altria's safety assessment performance composite score earned by our facilities
2.2*
Altria's OSHA recordable injury rate
This rate is lower than the benchmark for U.S. Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing.
1.2*
Altria's OSHA lost day rate
This rate is equal to the benchmark for U.S. Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing.
Employee Resource Groups
Adult tobacco and wine consumers come from all different backgrounds with changing tastes and a wide range of personal preferences. It's important to invite our diverse co-workers to share their experiences to help our businesses connect with these diverse adult consumers.
Our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) bring together groups of employees with shared characteristics or life experiences to help the company benefit from our diversity and become more inclusive. Through our ERGs, we're able to better understand and connect with suppliers, our adult consumers and each other.
Altria's ERGs:
EAST
Elevating Asian Strengths and Talents
Elevate Asian strengths and talent to help Altria achieve its mission in a global environment.
Mosaic
Altria's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Network
Work to foster greater diversity, creativity and innovation by promoting a culture of inclusion and opportunity.
Salute
Altria's Military Network
Leverage the skills, values and culture of our company's current and former service members.
Sí!
Altria's Hispanic Network
Leverage Hispanic talent for solutions and insights in achieving Altria's mission.
Spring
Young Professionals Network
Enhance Altria’s position as the place for young professionals to establish and grow meaningful careers.
UNIFI
Altria's Black Employee Network
Strengthen diversity of the leadership pipeline, foster professional development and leverage unique cultural insights of Altria's Black employees.
Women in Manufacturing
Extend the benefits of a national association dedicated to the attraction, development and retention of women in the manufacturing industry.
Women in Sales
Altria Group Distribution Company (AGDC)
Work to develop the careers of the women in AGDC’s sales force.
Women's Network
Serve as a catalyst for the development and advancement of women within the Altria family of companies.
Compliance & Integrity
Our success depends on our people and how we conduct business. We pursue our business objectives with integrity and in full compliance with all applicable laws.
 We work hard to achieve a culture of compliance and integrity that:
Altria's Chairman, CEO and President, the Board of Directors and senior officers are accountable for Altria's Compliance & Integrity Program.
Speaking Up & Preventing Retaliation
Our compliance and integrity program is built on personal accountability. We require our employees to speak up if they believe misconduct has occurred or if something just doesn’t seem right. We also make it clear that we will not tolerate retaliation against employees who raise good faith compliance concerns.
Training
All employees receive training on the Code of Conduct and how to use it in decision making. The Code also requires employees to speak up if they believe misconduct has taken place. We expect our employees to comply with the Code and company policies relevant to their jobs.
Compliance & Integrity Investigations Activity
 We act promptly, professionally and confidentially in response to any report or concern of a potential violation of our Code of Conduct, policies or the law. We investigate allegations we receive, without exception. We report the findings from investigations to our employees on an annual basis.
In 2018, about 37 percent of employee compliance concerns came from in-person reports, with the remaining cases coming primarily through the Integrity HelpLine and reports from Management. About half of a percent of our 2018 cases were submitted anonymously, compared to one percent in 2017.
We substantiated misconduct in 115 of the 237 cases in 2018 – a substantiation rate of 49 percent. Management worked with Human Resources (and other subject matter experts, as needed) to determine appropriate disciplinary or corrective action for violations, such as termination, suspension, warnings and counseling. None of the substantiated cases involved matters or amounts that were material to Altria.
8000
|
|