Diversity In Action

Dominion has a long history of promoting diversity

The energy giant’s six employee councils consult with management, recommend action and get involved in education and other community concerns

Dominion diversity folks: Kevin Grant; Shannon Venable, IT enterprise services director; Teri Taylor, diversity consultant; Tomako Deaner, diversity manager.

The company’s electric generation business, based at its Richmond, VA HQ, manages its electric utilities with their generating stations. Transmission, based in Clarksburg, WV, runs North America’s largest natural gas storage system and operates the company’s gas pipelines.

The energy giant employs plenty of IT. “Today, all our key business processes rely heavily on IT, making it an integral part of our company,” says Shannon Venable, director of IT enterprise services.

Word-of-mouth recruiting is strong at Dominion. The company’s shared IT organization employs business systems analysts, account managers, project managers, system analysts and developers. IT supports the company’s core finance systems, enterprise systems, financial ops, HR ops, accounting and external affairs. IT even supports some control systems through division operation centers, although this is usually an engineering function.

As the company’s energy business expands it needs more MEs and EEs with fossil-fuel and nuclear experience. Former military engineers and ex-Navy nuclear techies are good candidates for those positions, says Tomako Deaner, manager of diversity and staffing.

Dominion has a long history of promoting diversity, and since it merged with CNG its corporate-wide focus has strengthened. According to spokesperson Daisy Pridgen, “Diversity is an important component of the company’s core values.”

The company works with SWE and NSBE, networks with the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) and recently started partnering with the Hispanic and Asian chambers of commerce.

Back in 1985 two dozen female engineers at Virginia Power, which was then Dominion’s largest unit, formed the first Richmond chapter of SWE. By 1989 the number of female engineers at the company had increased to 100.

Diversity issues at today’s Dominion are addressed by a corporate community affairs group, a workforce diversity organization and a supplier diversity office. The workforce diversity group focuses on employee relations and inclusion efforts and supports Dominion’s six active employee councils.

Teri Taylor, diversity consultant, explains that the councils work through their executive sponsors to inform management and recommend action on topics related to diversity. The councils also get involved in hosting events, maintaining websites, producing newsletters and educating co-workers.

Their internal education campaigns generate discussion about various aspects of diversity, such as religion, AIDS in the workplace and the generational divide. “I think that as a company we’re starting to talk about a lot of things we might not have without the councils’ lead,” says Deaner.

The councils also sponsor “meet-and-greet” events. Members travel to various company offices and worksites to conduct educational sessions and answer questions.

Dominion’s annual “Strong men and women: excellence in leadership” program honors prominent African American leaders, and the company sponsors a high school essay contest about their achievements. The winning student gets a laptop and the student’s school gets a $1,000 grant.

Individual community involvement and volunteerism is encouraged at Dominion. Employees can take off a paid day each year for community service.

In Richmond, a lunch buddies program brings volunteers together with kids from inner-city schools to help with their studies and test prep. Kevin Grant, an IT pro and Six Sigma black belt at Dominion, participated in the program for three years and says, “It was a very rewarding experience.”

D/C