PG&E employees share their own stories to spark larger dialogue about race
In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing last May, a few passionate PG&E employees reached out and created a safe space for dialogue about the incident, which led them to create the Strategic Allies Leading Transparency, or SALT, Task Force. The result is a framework to operationalize PG&E’s “Speak Up, Listen Up, Follow Up” culture to help identify and effect systemic change.
Offering their perspective as Black men living in America, former IT Department employees Ali Flowers and Kenneth Forward spearheaded a discussion for leaders and non-leaders in IT to talk about civil unrest and racial injustice last June. The discussion gave teammates a place to voice their emotions and concerns and became the foundation for the SALT task force.
Since then, SALT has organized more than two dozen conversations, engaging more than 8,000 employees in departments across the company to address topics not typically discussed openly at work—issues such as race, privilege, psychological safety, diversity of thought, civil unrest, protests and immigration—along with leadership and teamwork.
In addition to Flowers and Forward, the SALT team includes Samira Saffarzadeh, formerly from electric operations, and LaTasha Jackson, formerly from ERIM.
Responses from colleagues have been inspiring, the team told American Gas.
“Fellow workers have been enthused by having a place to have such dialogues, and it has become apparent this has been a desire of theirs for quite some time,” they said. “We are very aware of differing opinions and experiences of those around us. It is important that a place be made for the airing of both issues and viewpoints in order to even begin to move toward addressing them in a constructive way.”
Leaders within PG&E saw the impact and contributions of the SALT Task Force and asked them to take on an 18-month assignment, which started last October, to focus solely on leading the effort.
In operationalizing PG&E’s “Speak Up, Listen Up, Follow Up” culture, “our framework includes a safe space for conversation [and] the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and relies on the utilization of data to assess and influence further changes in existing programs and policies,” said the team.
The SALT Task Force says its expected outcome is to have a more inclusive, safe and transparent work environment that will enable PG&E to better serve its customers and communities.