Southwest Says It Is Making Progress on Internal Diversity

Southwest Airlines today issued a memo to all employees, customers and partners, saying that, a year later, it has made progress on its DEI initiative.

DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion.

In September 2020, Southwest announced its company-wide goals to strengthen and improve efforts to create more diverse, equitable and inclusive job opportunities, as well as candidate pipelines while championing a welcoming environment for all employees.

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"Summer 2020 was a season of learning for Southwest Airlines in many ways; it heightened our awareness of social injustice and initiated an increased focus on our own diversity and inclusion efforts. We started with evolving our existing Company Values around how we show up individually, how we treat each other, and how we work as a Team," Bob Jordan, Executive Vice and incoming CEO at Southwest Airlines, said in the memo.

"We identified that the first step toward accomplishing these goals was concentrating on key areas such as diversifying Senior Leadership, enhancing diversity in hiring, providing mentorship and sponsorship opportunities, improving the retention and upward mobility of diverse talent, and training Leaders and Employees. In the past year, we have taken tangible steps to update the required infrastructure, processes, and practices to meet these objectives."

To that end, the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Department formed an Executive Steering Committee to support the strategic direction of the progress. Additional strides include evolving the Company's talent acquisition processes by requiring diverse candidate pools, inclusion training for all hiring Leaders and the creation of a Diversity Recruiting Center of Excellence (COE).

Southwest is currently working with more than 188 community partners in support of its efforts to continue developing diverse and inclusive talent pipelines and expanding recruiting efforts. Southwest also recently launched a formal Sponsorship and Mentorship Program and is enhancing its existing Supplier Diversity Program.

Southwest launched a DEI Employee resource website, created an Allyship Guide and introduced the ability for Employees to develop diversity-focused groups. The purpose of these initiatives is to empower Employees to explore, educate and further connect in the DEI space.