We uphold four core values: trust is our greatest asset; global force, local citizen; always finding better ways; and stronger together. These values guide how we conduct our business, develop our workforce and care for our communities.

Throughout 2019, we actively led a range of employee programs, community outreach partnerships and philanthropic efforts that advanced our role in corporate responsibility and our involvement in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

Our People

Inclusion and diversity are not only central to our company’s values, they are good for our business. They are also key factors in helping us achieve our goal of being a high-performing organization and a global destination for talent. With nearly 40,000 employees around the world, we know that our differences are what make us a stronger company.

We continued to see progress with our inclusion and diversity efforts in 2019, as we diligently worked across the organization to maintain a culture where every employee feels valued and supported. During the year, we adhered to a hiring process that strives for a diverse slate of candidates and uses a diverse panel of interviewers to reduce bias in our senior-level candidate pools. We strengthened employee and manager communication and education programs, with a focus on creating a more diverse, inclusive environment.

We continually evaluate our employee benefit programs, evolving our offerings to match the needs of our workforce, including extending parental leave for adoption and surrogate births and providing health care coverage for fertility treatments for same-sex couples — which helped strengthen our reputation as an employer of choice within the LGBTQ community. For six consecutive years, we have been proud to receive a score of 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign Equality Index, which places State Street among the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality.” We have instituted actions aimed at reducing the pay gap between men and women. Even prior to it becoming a law, globally we decided to stop asking compensation history of job candidates, continuing our efforts to have greater representation of women and people of color at the top levels within our organization. We launched our diversity goals strategy in 2011 and since then we have made progress on both women and employees of color being more represented in senior leadership levels.

Across the company, senior executives are held accountable for our inclusion and diversity efforts, with progress against our goals tied to their compensation.

Employee Engagement

One way we support our diverse workforce is through our more than two dozen employee networks and 110 chapters worldwide. These employee-run organizations have senior management sponsorship and, provide opportunities for colleagues to confer and collaborate with one another — and with State Street — on issues that matter to them. We measure the networks through the impact they have on their members’ careers as well as on our culture, community, clients and business. We measure the networks through the impact they can have on our culture, community, their members’ careers, and on our clients and our business.

Our employee networks drive a culture of inclusion that helps us achieve State Street's business strategy by supporting our goal of becoming a high-performing organization. For example, our Black Professionals Group collaborated with our Project Management Office Council and Global Marketing to develop an internal resource for project managers, accessible to all those in project management roles to leverage resources and establish cross-company standards. And our Professional Women’s Network ran three internal consulting projects resulting in an estimated $190,000 savings to the company, and lent their services to the Boston Women’s Workforce Council for another three consulting projects.

Two company-paid volunteer days provide a valuable way for employees to connect over support for important causes, and underscore the value of volunteerism and the role it plays in driving employee engagement. Our fall 2019 employee engagement survey bore that out, as employees who participated in volunteer activities scored significantly higher than those who did not.

Our employees were generous with their own time in 2019, cumulatively spending nearly 83,000 hours volunteering to support more than 1,000 community organizations throughout the world. Some of that time was logged during our first Global Volunteer Week in September 2019, when thousands of employees across the company completed 350 projects, including hosting personal finance workshops for domestic workers in Hong Kong and cleaning up hurricane-damaged beaches on the Cayman Islands.

Providing employees with the tools to succeed is another way we foster an inclusive culture. . From streamlining our performance management process to providing education and training, we are committed to attracting and developing the industry's top talent.

We continue to refine our efforts to support a strong performance culture. We have increased the transparency in our performance management process to ensure that all employees know where they stand throughout the year. This is achieved through monthly check-in meetings with their managers.

A leadership scorecard specific to our executives is also used to focus efforts not only on what is achieved but how, with a focus on leadership ability, risk excellence and employee engagement.

To help our employees better understand how bias may impact their environments, themselves, and their colleagues. A virtual self-paced course, Inclusive Leadership: Understanding Unconscious Bias, was rolled out to all employees globally early in 2019.

We have also ensured bias training in our promotion and hiring practices through awareness and an evidence-based assessment model.

We strengthened our Global Learning platform, a self-directed, educational and training offering designed to augment new employee onboarding, encourage engagement and improve management skills. Through courses and interactive trainings, employees can access a range of learning opportunities, from sales and client engagement courses to culture-focused offerings, such as Working in a Cross-Cultural Virtual Environment and Inclusive Leadership.

Taking a Stand

When there’s an issue we’re passionate about, we take a stand to get results. Three years ago, we made headlines with State Street Global Advisors’ Fearless Girl campaign — and a statue on Wall Street — to increase the number of women on corporate boards. Since then, almost 700 companies have added a female director to their previously all-male boards, and more change is likely to follow. We continued taking a public stand for diversity when our Chairman and CEO Ron O’Hanley recommitted to the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion pledge, joining more than 900 other executives seeking cultivate diverse talent and inclusive workplace cultures.

Our focus on diversity extends beyond our own walls to our entire value chain. In 2019, our Global Procurement team purchased goods and services from 4,700 suppliers that were majority-owned by women, minorities, veterans, people with disabilities or those in the LGBTQ community.

Community Outreach & Philanthropic Efforts

Through the collaborative efforts of our State Street Foundation, employees, and partnerships with nonprofits and government organizations, we endeavored to make our communities a better place to live and work in 2019.

Our State Street Foundation has been a strong, global force in philanthropy since its inception in 1977, providing financial support to nonprofit organizations through grants and matching employee donations. Last year, it distributed approximately US$21 million in philanthropic support, with US$15.9 million dedicated to education and workforce development programs including our signature Boston Workforce Investment Network (Boston WINs), which helps the city’s high school students prepare for future employment. Building on the success of WINs — now in its fifth year — we launched similar workforce development programs during the year in Ireland and Poland, adapting our model to the needs of each location. When our communities need help, employees and State Street Foundation become stronger together, combining employee donations with matching grants for greater impact. These matching donations totaled US$5.1 million in 2019. As the global public health crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, State Street Foundation made emergency grants totaling US$1.2 million to five global nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) participating in relief efforts. For employee donations to select COVID-19 responders, State Street Foundation has instituted a double-match feature to amplify the impact of employee giving in this extraordinary time.

Environment and Sustainability

We are a global company that does not take its relationship with the earth for granted. Sustainability and environmental stewardship are two tenets embedded in all facets of our business — from how we manage our buildings to tools that bring more transparency to the investment process. In 2019, we reduced our carbon footprint, improved our corporate responsibility efforts and created products and services that advanced ESG issues.

We made notable progress toward our 2025 environmental goals, which remain a key focus of our corporate responsibility strategy. Several initiatives across our company — many stemming from the grassroots efforts of our employees — helped put us six years ahead of our initial goals, starting with a 31% reduction in our carbon footprint against a 2015 baseline. We reduced our water usage by 21% on a per-person basis and increased our recycling rate to 72%, driven in large part by employee efforts to eliminate single-use plastics in our offices.

A critical part of tracking our progress is how we report our results — to our shareholders, employees and the communities where we operate. With our 2019 Corporate Responsibility (CR) Report, we are reporting for the first time against the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) framework in addition to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework. Developed and widely embraced by the financial community, the SASB framework organizes reporting of key material information around five pillars: environment, social capital, human capital, business model and innovation, and leadership and governance. [View our 2019 CR Report for more details.]

In 2019, our asset management business incorporated ESG issues into a number of new products and services. In July, State Street Global Advisors launched the ESG Liquid Reserves Fund, which leverages R-Factor™, our proprietary ESG-scoring model that brings more transparency to this type of investing. Our Global Markets team also enhanced ESGX®, our web-based platform that provides clients with tools to assess ESG-factor exposure in their portfolios. To help galvanize our ESG efforts across the company, in September we hosted our first ESG Forum in Boston. During the event, attendees heard from experts on the latest breakthroughs in ESG research and implementation. Speakers included ESG pioneer and Harvard Business School Professor George Serafeim, with whom we have partnered to develop ESG-related thought leadership.

Our work around sustainability was singled out in 2019, when State Street was added to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, which evaluates the performance of thousands of companies, selecting the top 10 percent of each industry using ESG criteria. The index is considered a gold standard in the industry, placing us in an esteemed category for our investors.

Our core values served us well in 2019, and we’ve continued to draw on them amid the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 global pandemic. State Street’s commitment to care for our employees, strengthen our financial system, and promote a better and sustainable world has never been deeper.