CoreCivic Inc

In order to fulfill our mission of providing high quality, compassionate treatment to all those in our care, we strive to attract, develop, and retain a diverse workforce of individuals who are driven by a deep sense of service, high standards of professionalism, and a responsibility to help government partners better the public good. The following information outlines the human capital strategies and initiatives designed to address the twin challenges of turnover and retention.

Demographics

Leadership & Learning

We facilitate annual performance and career development discussions with all employees. These discussions consist of a continuous cycle of goal alignment, individual development planning, and performance and talent reviews. In 2023, 98% of all employees received annual performance reviews. We continue to use a leading cloud-based talent system to align performance, talent management, career development activities, and training.

In addition, every year we facilitate talent review discussions to help assess potential and identify developmental opportunities within our leadership pipeline. Through these discussions, we continue to see opportunities for advancement for our existing workforce. Our 2023, talent reviews included all leaders in our facilities, from facility department heads through wardens, plus headquarters-based directors and above. Of the 1,296 leaders assessed, 18% were identified for accelerated development, with 9% classified as "ready now" for advanced leadership responsibilities. Supervisors of the 91% of leaders who were not "ready now" received development resource guides with CoreCivic-specific ideas for experience, exposure, and education opportunities. Supervisors can use these resources to help those employees close the gap between their current performance and the requirements for higher levels of responsibility and complexity.

In 2023, we continued our focus on our leadership candidate pipeline and leader development needs. The CoreCivic Leadership Experiences and Rotations program, or CLEAR, continues to yield positive results as a development mechanism for top talent. CLEAR is a two-year rotational development program designed to provide individuals identified during our talent management discussions with accelerated development opportunities through multiple, short-term experiences. The breadth of roles can vary across different career paths and are intended to develop the rising leader's readiness for targeted roles with higher levels of responsibility and complexity following successful completion of the program. In 2023, we graduated our first cohort of CLEAR participants. These CLEAR graduates were all placed in facility leadership roles. We also began our second CLEAR cohort of participants.

We recognize the importance of investing in our people. Our management approach to training and development is overseen by our Chief Human Resources Officer and Managing Director, Enterprise Learning and Development, and is implemented by leaders at our headquarters as well as a network of learning and development managers across our facilities. Our training activity and records are managed according to our learning and development policy, and our BOD receives periodic updates on the delivery of strategic training programs.

All CoreCivic employees are eligible to participate in various leadership and operational trainings. For example, through CoreCivic University, our employees can refine their current skills as well as learn new, valuable skills. To date, we have graduated 4,733 employees from CoreCivic University programs. For new and existing employees alike, we provide training that meets or exceeds ACA and government partner standards, including an average of 200 hours of pre-service and on-the-job training for new employees. We also require a minimum of 40 hours of annual in-service and specialty training for employees in our Safety and Community segments.

Culture & Employee Engagement

People are at the center of what we do. We believe that culture influences employee engagement. Therefore, we seek the perspectives of our employees through our periodic, anonymous, full-census culture survey to help us enhance our culture and make the workplace more engaging.

In 2023, we conducted an abbreviated culture survey. This survey was an outcome of a recommendation by our DE&I Advisory Council to measure progress on our diversity and inclusion strategies. In addition to the DE&I related questions, we included questions designed to answer key questions about our organization's culture, giving us a pulse on the work we're doing to strengthen our culture and complimenting the internal pulse survey we conducted in 2022. The results of the 2023 survey will be disseminated to our employees and action plans created in early 2024.

We know that bringing out the best in our people is the greatest way to recruit, retain, and develop our employees. We continually work to create a culture of respect where we value everyone's differences, appreciate individual contributions, and support people so they reach their highest potential.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We are proud of our diverse workforce. We recognize that employees come from many different backgrounds and that these differences are integral to how we view and experience the world. We believe that DE&I improves safety and security, drives quality, increases employee engagement, and provides greater accountability, all of which allow us to better serve the needs of our government and other third-party partners and employees.

Our Chief Human Resources Officer and our Vice President of Human Resources lead our strategic approach to DE&I. Our DE&I policies prohibit harassment and promote proactive efforts around DE&I initiatives. In accordance with federal contract requirements, we maintain affirmative action plans designed to provide equality of opportunity for all common diversity demographics, including but not limited to, qualified minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and covered veterans.

We believe there are opportunities to further advance our strategies around providing diversity of opportunity to all staff at CoreCivic. We have made significant investments and strides in the development of an executive-endorsed company roadmap for our DE&I-intended outcomes and established principles. We have communicated our plans to all leaders, employees, and the BOD. Additionally, we have taken steps towards achieving our stated DE&I principles (Create a Common DE&I Language, Create a Culture of Belongingness and Respect, and Create a Pipeline of Diverse Candidates) through the recommendations of our DE&I Advisory Council. This DE&I Advisory Council includes a select team of CoreCivic employees representing our organization's diversity by gender, ethnicity, tenure, business unit, and geography. In 2023, we concluded the successful pilot of our three Business Resource Groups, or BRGs, women's, military, and multicultural. We extended membership for all BRGs to our enterprise employees. We've already seen the tangible, positive impacts these groups are having on our culture.

In 2023, we issued our second DE&I Annual Report showcasing our DE&I journey from the beginning, our progress towards our DE&I goals, our external impact within the community and some brief highlights of our future work for the year ahead. The DE&I report may be accessed on our website at www.corecivic.com/dei. The information included in the report is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report.

In collaboration with executives and senior leaders, we continued our focus on measuring the outcomes of our DE&I actions for continuous improvement. In 2023, we had a collective 98% completion rate for yearly DE&I e-learning. We also continue to use a DE&I e-learning module as part of our pre-service and in-service curricula. We continued to refine governance for our DE&I strategy with accountability to enterprise executives and the BOD. We also extended our involvement and sponsorship of DE&I community organizations such as Advancement of Women in Nashville, The Table, and Middle Tennessee State University's Charlie and Hazel Daniels Veterans and Military Family Center, to name a few.

Hiring & Sustaining our Workforce

We are the largest employer in many of the areas in which our facilities are located. As such, we are committed to supporting and growing the local communities through our hiring and outreach efforts. Our long-term tenure in many of the communities we serve has provided stable careers and career growth opportunities to workforces in these areas. We provide equal opportunity employment to all candidates and follow the United States Department of Labor Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs equal employment opportunity guidelines for hiring.

In 2023, we invested approximately $9.2 million in talent attraction efforts to reach prospective candidates, and we received over 106,900 job applications, an increase of 61% over 2022. For the past thirteen consecutive years, CoreCivic has been recognized as a GI Jobs Military Friendly employer. CoreCivic has been notified that we will once again receive awards for Military Friendly Employer, Military Friendly Spouse, Military Friendly Brand, and Military Friendly Supplier Diversity Program in 2024.

Compensation & Benefits

We utilize descriptive and prescriptive Human Capital analytics to align pay with our compensation strategy. We leverage these analytics to act on changing labor market conditions to assist us with our efforts to maintain market competitive wages. In addition, we evaluate internal pay equity though the use of job evaluation and market analyses that we then adjust for tenure, experience, location, performance, and other variables that can affect wages. We have experienced labor shortages and wage pressures in many markets across the country. During the third quarter of 2023, we provided wage increases to nearly all of our facility staff not covered by the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act, which is applicable to our facilities with federal contracts, in order to remain competitive. Additionally, throughout the year we made out-of-cycle wage adjustments to maintain market competitiveness. We achieved higher staffing levels during 2023 as a result of these investments in staffing, and we expect to continue to invest in staffing resources during 2024, which may result in additional compensation and incremental expenses. While we have achieved recent successes, the benefits of our investments in staffing may not be sustained, and labor shortages could intensify again in the future.

We offer multiple medical and wellness benefit plans, dental, vision, and disability income insurance, flexible spending accounts, and life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance. In addition, we provide our employees with paid time off and paid holidays. We also provide retirement benefits to our employees through a 401(k) retirement plan. To be eligible for most benefit plans, employees must be in a full-time position; certain exceptions apply, such as eligibility for the 401(k) retirement plan if the 401(k) retirement plan's service and hour requirements are met or at locations where the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act applies.

Labor Relations

As of December 31, 2023, we employed 11,694 full- and part-time employees, including employees with our transportation and electronic monitoring subsidiaries, TransCor and Recovery Monitoring Solutions Corporation, respectively. Approximately 1,860 of our employees at 12 of our facilities, or approximately 15.9% of our workforce, are represented by labor unions. All of our collective bargaining agreements contain no-strike clauses that bind the unions and the bargaining unit employees. Work stoppages at any of our facilities are exceedingly rare. In the opinion of management, overall employee relations are good. New executive orders, administrative rules and changes in National Labor Relations could increase organizing activity at locations where employees are currently not represented by a labor organization. Increases in organizational activity or any future work stoppages could have an adverse impact on our business, financial condition, or results of operations.

Employee Safety

We are committed to bettering the public good by making our facilities and communities safe for our team members, those under our care, and the public. In 2023, our "Team Safety" program continued initiatives to provide a safe environment and safe working conditions as reflected in our policies and procedures.