Building a Workforce for the Future

Recruiting Team El Paso

Our staffing group recruits from colleges and universities with programs in engineering, geology, and geophysics. We recognize the importance of adding the best talent to our team in order to maintain a competitive edge: and our recruiters made 94 visits to 12 campuses during the fall semester of 2008.

Our summer intern program, EP Elite, is another avenue for identifying entry-level candidates and exposing them to employment opportunities at El Paso. In 2008, we placed 74 interns throughout the company.

We also appreciate the rich pool of knowledge possessed by career professionals, and we are reaching out to this demographic through professional organizations, targeted advertising, and job fairs. We believe El Paso’s reputation in the industry is an asset in recruitment, based on the more than 25,000 job applications received in 2008 from external candidates.

Our employee referral program is yet another effective way El Paso identifies and recruits experienced professionals. We offer a cash referral bonus to all employees, excluding officers, who make successful referrals. Every position filled by referral carries at least a $1,000 bonus. We filled 668 positions in 2008, with 16 percent resulting from employee referrals.

Workforce Diversity

Building and sustaining an inclusive work environment aligns with El Paso’s values of stewardship, integrity, safety, accountability, and excellence. We respect the unique and individual differences of our employees, vendors, and neighbors in the communities we serve. We view these differences as essential strengths and our goal is to make the most of them in pursuit of our vision to be the place to work, the neighbor to have, and the company to own.

In 2008, the LEAD Committee (Leveraging Experiences and Differences) launched an effort to propose the best approach for El Paso to build and sustain an inclusive environment. The committee’s work involved extensive research of best practices and gathering feedback through focus groups with fellow employees. We believe sustaining an inclusive environment across our company requires a grassroots approach, rather than a top-down initiative. In fact, our annual employee giving campaign, has thrived because our employees have taken ownership.

Based on the LEAD Committee’s findings, our focus going forward for building a culture of inclusion will call on employees across the company to develop meaningful action plans for their divisions or teams . Because there are many dimensions of diversity, our employees’ plans will vary, but all will have the complete support of our leadership and management team.

Our Birmingham employees have developed the Diversity Working Committee to make recommendations on programs, initiatives, and training that support our commitment to valuing diversity and investing in people. This committee helps make our teams aware of the positive impacts of a diverse workforce and challenges our Birmingham team to develop initiatives that promote and enhance diversity in our workforce.

Our company policies prohibit discrimination of any type and our Equal Employment Opportunity Policy is available to all employees on the company intranet.