Southwest Gas Holdings Inc

Throughout our collective operations, employees are critical to our success. Their talent and dedication are what allow us to provide safe and reliable service to customers and explore new opportunities that align with our strategies, while carrying out organizational core values related to safety, quality, stewardship, integrity, relationships, and sustainability, among others. The Board oversees matters relating to our vision, values, and culture where employee health and safety; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and human and workplace rights are priorities. The Board receives regular reports from management and subject matter experts in these areas, and in turn provides guidance on current and future initiatives. The Board also assists management in integrating responsibility and sustainability into strategic activities to create long-term customer and shareholder value.

Our Company and the Board are committed to a culture of continuous improvement over the safety of our employees and the communities we serve every day. Employees and contract workers receive initial safety orientation training to learn practices, procedures, and policies established by our businesses. New and recurring safety training occurs at regular intervals thereafter. Frontline safety strategies, developed with executive leadership, contribute to the improvement of our safety management systems. Safety metrics also form part of incentive compensation programs for leaders of the Company’s business segments, reinforcing our top priority to safeguard our communities, our employees, and our assets. At Southwest, such metrics include Damages per 1,000 Tickets and Incident Response Time; at Centuri, they include Total Recordable Incident Rate and Days Away/Restricted/Transferred (“DART”). In each case, the measures are widely used in the respective industries comprising our businesses. All segments maintain additional behavioral-based programs and extensive employee training initiatives to promote safe work.

At December 31, 2023, Southwest had 2,371 regular full-time equivalent employees. Southwest believes that a skilled, highly trained workforce is a key to success in the utility industry, and a driver of Southwest’s safety performance and high customer satisfaction ratings. Southwest has a positive reputation as an employer and strong relationships with employees. The compensation, benefits, and working conditions are comparable to those generally found in the utility industry. Employee engagement surveys are periodically deployed to gauge the extent to which employees feel connected and valued. Flexible working arrangements are available to employees, which support work-life balance. No Southwest employees are represented by a labor union. A stable workforce has been important to knowledge transfer and succession processes, with the average tenure of Southwest employees being approximately 11 years. Germane to attracting and retaining employees are our compensation and benefits programs, which are regularly reviewed. For employees hired on or before December 31, 2021, Southwest offers an employee pension and employer matching contributions to the employee defined contribution plan. Employees hired on or after January 1, 2022 do not participate in the employee pension plan, but receive non-elective employer contributions and increased employer matching contributions to the employee defined contribution plan. The health and wellness of our workforce are supported by group insurance programs, incentive programs in support of total health, and related employee programs. In 2024, Southwest added a preferred provider organization option to our health care coverage, providing more choices for our employees. Southwest also offers a tuition assistance program and encourages employees to leverage these programs to remain current in their role or to acquire new skills for career advancement. Regular succession planning helps ensure that talent is identified and prospective leaders are developed in order to build their skills and be prepared for future roles.

At December 31, 2023, Centuri had 12,572 regular full-time equivalent employees working across 45 states and provinces throughout the U.S. and Canada. Employee counts fluctuate between seasonal periods, normally heaviest in the summer and fall. Typical of the segment’s industry, a majority of Centuri employees are represented by unions and covered by collective bargaining agreements. Centuri maintains a market-based total rewards strategy to attract, retain, motivate, and develop employees. Additionally, Centuri has a scholarship program, which awards more than half of the grants to minority students who are dependents of Centuri employees. Similar employee engagement and succession planning protocols to those existing at Southwest are deployed at Centuri.

Collectively, we embrace a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion to not only protect employees under laws designed to do so regardless of protected status, but to reinforce the value that diversity brings to the workplace. We strive to have a workforce that reflects the communities we serve, and engage experts from time to time to update management on the trends and benefits of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives. Our belief is that adherence to these principles forms the genesis of a workforce that is both diverse and inclusive. Southwest and Centuri have several programs, including employee resource groups, diversity councils, a diversity ambassadors (champions) network, educational outreach programs, and other initiatives designed to attract and retain a diverse workforce. We commit to creating a safe and respectful workplace by encouraging employees to value diversity through unconscious bias training, and by inviting them to engage in meaningful conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion topics. Through these and other efforts, we place value in our people and nurture their development, while ensuring that all employees have an equitable opportunity for success.