Foster Cohesion and Inclusion

Strategy progress

To foster a more equitable workplace, we are modernizing our internal policies to prioritize diversity, inclusion, and career advancement. These efforts range from dismantling structural biases in recruitment and hiring to providing tailored professional development and expanding employee support networks. By investing in mentorship, allyship, and transparent growth pathways, we are ensuring our workforce reflects and supports the diverse communities we serve.

Modernize Recruitment and Hiring Practices: We are actively dismantling structural biases in our hiring process by implementing equity-focused interview practices and expanding our mentorship programs to include temporary employees and college interns. To diversify our workforce, we recently hired an environmental justice law fellow and launched targeted marketing to reach underrepresented candidates. Moving forward, we are developing data analysis tools to track applicant demographics and conducting surveys to create clearer pathways to permanent employment for our fellows and interns.

Tailored Professional Development Programs: To support the advancement of employees from diverse backgrounds, we successfully increased mentorship participation by 30% and launched an Emerging Leaders Academy. We also provided specialized training in resume building and interview skills to empower staff in their career growth. Our next phase includes implementing mandatory equity training for all supervisors and managers while offering employees the opportunity to create individualized professional development plans.

Strengthen Employee Support and Allyship: We are fostering a more inclusive workplace culture through comprehensive allyship workshops and newly expanded guidelines for Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). These initiatives provide staff with the tools to support one another and advocate for equity internally. We are currently focused on establishing additional identity-based ERGs and hosting networking conversations to ensure every employee has a dedicated space for connection and support.

Strategy progress

We are embedding equity into our core operations by modernizing our procurement systems to diversify our supplier pool and drafting new guidelines to incorporate socio-economic considerations into all Board decisions. To support a more inclusive culture, we have launched a continuous learning calendar and held several workshops. Our current focus is training staff in these updated procedures and developing standardized best practices to ensure unbiased hiring and promotional decisions across the organization.

Redouble DEI Efforts Across Operations: We are embedding equity into every level of the Air District’s work, from internal procedures to Board decision-making. To diversify our supplier pool, we have implemented new procurement software and are training staff in these updated purchasing processes. Additionally, we have drafted guidelines to incorporate socio-economic considerations into Board materials and are developing a formal review process to ensure these standards are applied consistently to all regulations and funding initiatives.

Annual Diversity and Unconscious Bias Training: To foster a culture of continuous learning, we established a comprehensive DEI training calendar and hosted six workshops on topics including allyship, LGBTQ inclusion, and mental health awareness. We are also developing hiring best practices for all managers. These resources will ensure that recruitment and promotional decisions across the organization are fair, objective, and free from unconscious bias.

Strategy progress

To foster a unified "One Air District" culture, we are enhancing internal connectivity through improved communication, knowledge sharing, and relationship-building initiatives. By modernizing our digital tools, launching collaborative programs like job shadowing, and hosting cross-divisional social events, we are ensuring that every employee feels informed, connected, and empowered to contribute to our shared mission.

Build Employees’ Knowledge of the Air District: To help employes learn about the organization, we have created a dynamic newsletter, developed an “Airwaves” video news series, updated orientation materials for new hires, and shared with all staff our quarterly progress on strategic plan implementation.

Enhance opportunities for knowledge sharing: To help employees learn from one another, we launched an internal directory that can be used for employees to learn more about each other and have trained all directory administrators. We are now working on piloting internal collaboration hubs and developing guidelines for use of the internal employee directory.

Create Opportunities for Relationship Building: To help employees get to know one another, we implemented “employee spotlights” at our Spring, Summer, Winter internal all staff meetings. To improve relationships and organizational culture we hosted multiple coffee chats and other social events, including traditional heritage celebrations. Over the next year, we will continue employee spotlights at all staff meetings, social events and coffee chats, as well as the development of a new staff ambassador program to help build relationships among employees.

Develop “Job Shadowing” Opportunities: We are working on developing a job shadowing program at the Air District, where employees can experience the work of their peers, to broaden their understanding of the challenges, opportunities, and connections to their own work.

Develop Internal Communications Program: We have updated our employee survey to assess our One Air District efforts on employee morale and satisfaction. We continue to work on best practices on how to collaborate across departments and are creating internal communication plans to highlight key program milestones and employee achievements.

Strategy progress

We are institutionalizing environmental justice as a foundational value by integrating it into both our educational frameworks and performance standards. By developing specialized curricula for leadership and staff while establishing environmental justice as a core competency in employee evaluations, we are ensuring that equity is not only understood but actively practiced across every level of the organization.

Environmental Justice Training: We are developing a training curriculum to increase internal knowledge of environmental justice.

Environmental Justice as Core Competency: We have added environmental justice as a core competency in our performance evaluations and have completed executive training. We also successfully worked with the employees’ association on new performance evaluations to reflect environmental justice and equity. Next, we will create a plan to operationalize environmental justice core competencies across the organization and begin staff and manager training.

Strategy progress

To boost morale and organization effectiveness, we are modernizing our employee recognition and evaluation systems to celebrate excellence and collaboration. By implementing a dedicated incentive program and a new recognition platform, we are ensuring that staff who exemplify our core values are formally honored. Furthermore, by integrating innovation and cross-functional learning into our performance evaluations, we are creating a clear framework that recognizes professional growth and a unified "One Air District" approach.

Employee Achievement Incentive: Next year, we will begin work on a multi-faceted employee recognition and appreciation program to acknowledge excellent performance.

Recognize Employees: We are identifying options for an employee recognition platform. Next, we will begin designing the employee recognition program.

Encourage Employees who Engage in Development Opportunities: We have modified performance evaluations to include collaboration, innovation, cross-functional learning, strategic plan, and skill development performance factors. We have also added performance factors and executive core competency definitions in the performance evaluation process to improve performance evaluation process.  We are now training employees in the new performance factors, ratings, and software platform. 

Strategy progress

We are transforming how we support and develop the Air District’s workforce, moving from traditional processes to a culture of continuous learning and career empowerment.

Comprehensive Onboarding: We have reimagined the "First Day" experience to ensure every new hire feels connected to our mission immediately. We launched a refreshed new hire orientation and added an all-day quarterly “One Air District” onboarding session to expand new employees’ knowledge about the Air District’s mission and culture.  We launched satisfaction surveys to continue to improve the onboarding experience.

Expand Mentoring: Knowledge-sharing is one of our greatest assets. We successfully expanded our mentoring program to 60 active participants, fostering vital cross-departmental connections. We gathered feedback from participants through an evaluation survey and have incorporated best practices into the program’s next phase.

Comprehensive Training: We are providing the tools our staff needs to lead. Our new Managers’ Learning Academy and specialized supervisor training courses are already in motion. We also launched an Emerging Leaders Academy to equip employees to lead and influence from any level. To make development more accessible, we are building a centralized online training calendar and 5-year training plan, creating a culture of learning and development.

Performance Reviews: We have transformed the annual review process to align with the agency’s strategic objectives and to encourage the growth and development of employees by offering Individualized Development Plans. As we finalize these improvements, our next major focus is a Succession Planning Framework to prepare the next generation of Air District leaders.