Values & Strategies
Our values of safety, trust, environmental leadership, teamwork and high performance are the foundation of our ethical culture. Our values also contribute to a high-integrity, transparent workplace where employees feel safe bringing their whole selves to work. Here’s a deeper look at how we apply our values at work every day.
Safety
Will always be the top focus for us - for every employee, customer, and community we serve. This includes physical safety, emotional safety and health and wellbeing. Nothing is more important.
Trust
Is built through one interaction at a time. We are committed to a mutually respectful and inclusive workplace for all employees. We do what we say and say what we do, treat each other with respect, listen to one another through open and honest conversations and speak up when we see something is not right. This is how we build and sustain extremely high levels of employee and customer trust.
Environmental Leadership
Means delivering safe, clean, reliable and affordable water and wastewater services. We protect our water sources and use this precious resource wisely. Our work is about excellence and the highest levels of care for our resources.
Teamwork
is being at our personal best every day by ensuring that every employee is empowered, and their voice is heard. We work together toward our common goals by sharing and debating ideas, leveraging our diversity, respecting differences of opinions and being accountable for our actions.
High Performance
means we all aspire to be our best, particularly because what we do is so critical to the lives of our customers. Performing at our best includes getting the fundamentals right every time, managing risks, and addressing issues quickly and transparently.
OUR STRATEGY
Our purpose and values underpin our overall business strategy. Our “strategy wheel” features five key focus areas for our company and illustrates how we work to achieve our vision. Each focus area ties to specific performance aspirations and goals designed to deliver continuous improvement for years to come.
Safety
Safety is both a strategy and a core company value. To us, safety is more than just “the right thing to do”—it’s the culmination of both physical and emotional safety. The health and safety of our employees and contractors is a leading indicator of our company’s health. Simply put, if we get safety right, we can get everything else right.
People
Maintaining an environment where our people feel valued, included and accountable is critical to our ability to serve our customers every day. We continuously work together to create an environment where employees can live up to their fullest potential and feel confident that what they do directly contributes to our company’s ability to stay strong, grow and make a difference in our customers’ lives. We are a safer, healthy and inclusive organization with a highly skilled workforce ready for the future.
Operational Excellence
Our operational excellence strategy helps us to find better and more efficient ways to do business, and to provide safe, clean and affordable water services for our customers. We leverage technology and process optimization to support the consistent execution of the fundamentals and business strategy. As the largest water and wastewater company, we assume the responsibility to go beyond minimum requirements and be an industry leader in operational and environmental excellence.
Growth
We believe that when companies grow, they can invest more in creating stable jobs, training, benefits, infrastructure and our communities. We are industry leaders in critical infrastructure investment and customer growth. Our growth benefits all our stakeholders, including our shareholders.
Customers
Our customers are at the center of everything we do and every decision we make. We want to provide a superior customer experience across our diverse customer base and be the trusted leader in water quality, water management, system resiliency and environmental stewardship. If our customers had a choice as to who serves them, we want them to choose us. Customer input, along with empathy for our customers’ ideas and experiences, drives how we change and improve our processes and systems. We are committed to showing customers and communities that we care about them. As a result, our customer base continues to grow, and the overall customer experience continues to improve.