My POV: Intel’s long-standing commitment to corporate responsibility and sustainability

On May 11, 2023, Intel published its annual Corporate Responsibility Report. The content below is a part of the letter from Intel's CPO. Find the full report here.

Intel’s long-standing commitment to corporate responsibility and sustainability—built on a strong foundation of transparency, governance, and ethics—is deeply integrated throughout all aspects of our business. As Chief People Officer, I lead our integrated approach to environment, social, and governance (ESG), which we believe creates value for Intel and our stakeholders by helping us mitigate risks, reduce costs, build brand value, and identify new market opportunities.

Our strategy starts with our people. As such, we have focused on our human capital strategy to help us continue to attract and retain the world’s best talent across every function while balancing the needs of the business groups. Our key technical and functional leaders are positioned to deliver on our IDM 2.0 transformation. We remain focused on optimizing our workforce in line with our business objectives and the long-term growth and leadership of the company in the semiconductor industry.

Leadership and I acknowledge the incredible sacrifice our employees make through the company’s ongoing right-sizing exercise. These measures were put in place to reduce the impact of the current macroeconomic environment on our long-term business and are expected to be temporary in nature. We remain focused on our IDM 2.0 strategy and goals, investments in our employees, and Intel’s leadership in corporate responsibility that help us continue to be an employer of choice. I know these decisions have been difficult, and we remain committed to rewarding employees who have helped us navigate these challenging times.

Intel’s RISE framework is our integrated, “One Intel” ESG strategy, which we continue to integrate into our operations, supply chain, industry, and beyond. We also work to enable our customers to meet their environmental and corporate responsibility commitments through our technology and the expertise of our employees. Our RISE goals focus on fully harnessing the power of technology to solve increasingly complex and interconnected global challenges. We continue to collaborate with the technology industry and other stakeholders. In 2022 we made progress on several industry-wide programs:

• Continuing our work with the Alliance for Global Inclusion – In April 20, we launched the Alliance for Global Inclusion, a coalition of technology and adjacent industry peers focused on driving collective impact in four key areas: leadership representation, inclusive language, inclusive product development, and improving STEM readiness in underrepresented communities. In the second year, the member companies confirmed two additional commitments from the CEOs and ratified the fifth level of the traditional DEI maturity model: collective impact. Every company can use its internal data and benchmark results with the Alliance’s Global Inclusion Index, understand where they are in the Alliance’s Maturity Model, and establish goals to accelerate results.
• Supporting efforts to increase the diverse STEM talent pipeline – The Intel Scholars program aims to expand access and opportunity and to increase the pipeline of diverse STEM talent by providing nearly $2 million annually to African American, Latinx, Native American, women, and veteran STEM students through higher education scholarships. In 2022, we awarded 194 students across the US scholarships and welcomed them into our Intel Scholars family. In addition to the financial award, every scholar received a welcome box, access to Headspace, a screening call from an Intel sourcer, career-focused training, Intel mentors, and more. We’re excited to see many scholars joining Intel this summer for an internship!

Inside Intel, we have made meaningful progress on our RISE goals, including new climate commitments and achievements within our water, diversity and inclusion, and supply chain responsibility efforts:

• Strengthening our supply chain resiliency – In 2022, we reached our 2030 goal of $2 billion in annual spending, in addition to meeting our three milestones to spend $500 million annually with women-owned suppliers outside the US by the end of 2025 and $800 million annually with minority-owned suppliers globally by the end of 2023, including $250 million with US Black-owned suppliers.
• Reducing energy use and driving cost efficiencies – Cumulatively we conserved approximately 970 million kWh of electricity from the 2020 baseline through the end of 2022, toward our 4 billion kWh 2030 goal. Cumulative savings through 2022 totaled approximately $70 million. In addition to conserving energy, we purchase renewable electricity and operate on-site alternative electricity projects that provide power directly to Intel buildings. We continued our 100% renewable electricity commitment for our US, Europe, Israel, and Malaysia operations and achieved 93% globally as of the end of 2022. Our absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decreased 4% from our 2019 baseline.
• Serving as an inclusive tech talent destination – We continue to support the development and progression of all our talent. The representation of Intel US employees who identify as having one or more disabilities increased by over 1%, from nearly 4% in 2021 to almost 5% in 2022. While the percentage of Intel employees who identify as veterans dropped slightly from approximately 7.2% in 2021 to 7.1% in 2022, in absolute numbers, veterans increased by more than 190 individuals. Our global representation of technical women increased from just over 24% in 2021 to more than 24.5% in 2022.

We see the growing acknowledgment of the importance of ESG and our historic and ongoing leadership as an opportunity to fulfill our purpose to create world-changing technology that improves the life of every person on the planet. We are proud of what we’ve achieved over our long history of action in corporate responsibility and for what’s to come.

For more information, check out Intel's?2022 - 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report and Jackie Sturm's editorial Intel Surpasses First 2030 Goal: $2 Billion in Diverse Supplier Spending.