Wesco 2024 Sustainability Report: Employee Engagement

Read the 2024 Wesco Sustainability Report here

Employee Engagement

We believe employee engagement goes beyond satisfaction on the job to include our employees’ willingness and ability to invest their personal efforts into the success of our company. To achieve that, we must create an environment where employees are enthusiastic about their work each day and know that their contributions are valued.

In 2023, we added an advanced survey analytics tool and launched a more formal annual employee engagement survey. Key highlights from the survey include:

• Ethical Conduct: 86% of respondents indicated we have a strong commitment to ethical business decisions and conduct; 7% above the global average. This is critically important to our reputation as a trusted partner to our suppliers and advisor to our customers.
   
• Health and Safety: 83% of respondents rated safety and our physical working conditions as favorable; 7% above the global average. Our scores for work- life balance were also strong with 80% rating it as favorable: 2% above the global benchmark.
   
• Manager Effectiveness: Scored 81%; four points above the global average. This means that 81% of our employees have a positive relationship with
  their manager and feel that they are supportive, respectful, fair and competent. Manager effectiveness is a key indicator of talent management and is considered essential to delivering superior results and developing and retaining talent.

At Wesco, we also use total turnover rate as a key performance indicator for engagement, which was 22.7% for Wesco in 2023.

Year Turnover Rate (%)

• 2021: 21.2%
• 2022: 21%
• 2023: 22.7%

Wesco Outstanding Work
(WOW)

In 2022, Wesco introduced the WOW recognition program, which spotlights an employee’s outstanding performance and everyday excellence. This platform allows colleagues to acknowledge their peers’ behaviors, efforts, celebrations, awards and results. Our Living Our Values award allows employees to nominate an employee for a monetary award when exemplifying our core values that have a direct impact on the business or the culture.

We reward employee achievements in implementing Lean principles within our company. The Excellence Award for Lean Leadership recognizes the Wesco leader who best embraces and leads the implementation of Lean within their organization. The Lean Execution Excellence Award is given to the top teams that deliver quantifiable results using Lean.

Culture of Coaching
(Mentoring)

Coaching is an integral part of our culture and has been intentionally embedded within our employee lifecycle, incorporated into our sales operating and conversation models, performance management activities, leadership development programs and Wesco’s Enterprise Leader Profile.

We upskill our leaders by way of coach-specific training accredited by the International Coaching Federation and see this investment in coaching as a regenerative one. When we develop managers and leaders as coaches, those leaders support and mentor employees in growing their capabilities, enhancing their capabilities and reaching their professional goals. In 2023, we increased the number of internally certified facilitators to increase capacity and allow for monthly facilitated workshops.

Performance Management

At Wesco, we take pride in fostering a high-performance culture and our myPerformance program is designed to support managers and their teams in ongoing feedback conversations to drive better results and alignment. The myPerformance program includes annual milestones of goal setting at the beginning of the year and a year-end performance appraisal to highlight accomplishments, share feedback and tie performance to rewards.

We also encourage managers to have ongoing check- ins with their teams to provide real-time feedback and coaching throughout the year. Our annual year-end performance appraisal process is synchronized with
the workforce compensation system for merit planning and rewards allocation, where the performance rating is linked to our merit guidance, which is in support of our pay-for-performance culture.

Leadership and Organization Review/Succession Planning

We strengthened our Leadership and Organization Review (LOR) process this year both in scope and frequency. The cycle is as follows:

• March: We capture and discuss our organizational priorities and identify talent-related actions.
• July: Each of our executives present their talent review and succession plans to our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer.
• September: CEO and CHRO review of talent and organization priorities with the Board of Directors.
• October: Our executives come together to calibrate talent development plans and identify opportunities for mobility.

These recent changes have generated additional value across our company by creating an ongoing conversation about our talent, providing tools to better identify, engage and develop our talent, activating conversations related to our critical needs and supporting intra-and inter-strategic business unit function mobility for our talent.

To learn more, download the 2024 Wesco Sustainability Report here.

About This Report

Unless otherwise stated, this report covers activities, data and initiatives from our fiscal year 2023.

ESG Disclosure and Framework Alignment

The topics covered in this report include those that we have determined to be material for our business and stakeholders as noted on page 12. Wesco aligns with several ESG frameworks and disclosures in support of our commitment to transparency and our fulfillment of stakeholder needs and expectations. We leverage the following frameworks and standards to provide robust ESG information disclosure:

• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): GRI offers a list of global standards and guidelines around sustainability reporting.
• Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB): SASB provides a comprehensive set of industry-specific disclosure topics and guidelines.
• Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD): TCFD provides disclosure recommendations on thematic ESG topics such as governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets to provide stakeholders with fuller information surrounding climate risks.
• CDP: Formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP is an international organization that helps companies and cities measure and disclose important environmental impact information through an annual questionnaire and rating system.
• United Nations Global Compact (UNGC): UNGC is an initiative that aims to help businesses align their strategies and work toward the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals.
• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (U.N. SDGs): U.N. SDGs provide a shared set of 17 toward peace and prosperity for people and planet goals and create a call to action by all countries in a global partnership.

We also regularly engage with our investors, employees, customers, regulators, ratings agencies and others on ESG and business issues. Additional information about Wesco can be found in our public financial filings—including our annual report and proxy filings—as well as on the Security and Exchange Commission’s website at www.sec.gov or on the Investors page of our website at Wesco.com.

Wesco plans to continue to report annually as we monitor, measure, and deepen our ESG initiatives and disclosures.

Wesco endorses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

More information about our SDG aligned initiatives is included throughout this report.

Assurance 
We did not seek third-party assurance for this report; however, we will consider doing so for future reporting. The information and data contained in this report was vetted by internal subject matter experts on the various ESG topics included in this report.

Contact Us 
We appreciate and welcome feedback on our ESG initiatives and reporting and invite you to contact us directly via email at [email protected].