2022 Annual Report: Ready to Help Lead in Inclusion & Diversity
Blues Perspectives
| 3 min read
At Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, we believe everyone in our state should have the best chance to live their healthiest lives.
Building health equity in our communities starts from within our company. Our efforts to foster a corporate culture that considers inclusion and diversity is critical to our success: our business must reflect and represent the communities we serve.
Diversity makes us stronger: solving complex problems becomes easier when the problem solvers represent communities with different experiences and backgrounds.
For nearly two decades under the stewardship of President and CEO, Daniel J. Loepp, our company’s inclusion and diversity efforts have engaged all areas of the enterprise, from the board of directors to employees at every level. These efforts extend to the work we do helping the communities we serve and improving health outcomes for all.
Building health equity in our communities
Blue Cross extends our culture of inclusion and diversity into our collaborations with providers and community organizations. The objective is to advance health equity and address disparities in our communities. Through our Health Disparities Action Team and Office of Health and Health Care Disparities, Blue Cross is level-setting on terminology, convening stakeholders across our corporate enterprise and transforming our culture. One of our achievements is the implementation of a health equity lens when developing new health insurance products, community programs, and corporate policies and procedures.
In 2022, recognizing a growing need for maternal health among our members, we focused funding and support to help women achieve healthy pregnancies and deliveries. We also invested in efforts to help improve health with the LGBTQ+ community:
- The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation and our Social Mission team awarded seven Advancing Maternal Health Equity grants totaling $272,000, furthering our collaboration with the Regional Perinatal Quality Collaboratives.
- Blue Cross added physician office-specific capabilities to the Patient-Centered Medical Home program that includes training on LGBTQ+ health care issues and how to create more inclusive practices. We also supported the launch of the Corktown Health Institute.
Building an inclusive and diverse workforce
In our workplaces, we joined together to create an environment where we can be authentic, share, learn from one another, grow both personally and professionally, and provide the best in customer and member service. In 2022:
- 90% of new employees completed cultural competency learning sessions
- 95% of leaders completed unconscious bias education
- More than 150 learning sessions were held throughout the year, with a combined attendance of 25,000 employees
- 30.6% of employees participate in employee resource networks
We strive to ensure our future workforce is diverse. In 2022, we continued to look closely at representation across the company:
- 43.1% of the workforce are people of color
- 34% of leadership are people of color
- 68.4% of workforce are women
- 55.3% of leadership are women
- 2% of workforce have disclosed disabilities
We are reaching diverse talent by strengthening recruitment efforts from historically Black colleges and universities, predominantly Black professional fraternities and sororities, and our partnerships with the Association of Latino Professionals for America, National Migrant Scholars and Grow Detroit’s Young Talent. We also nurtured existing relationships and established new partnerships with organizations to create a diverse pipeline of early career talent for in-demand information technology roles.
Blue Cross’ board of directors established our Supplier Diversity Program in 1992 to promote the use of minority-owned businesses. It has since expanded to include enterprises owned by women, LGBTQ+, veterans and people with disabilities, and other businesses that are historically disadvantaged. The program tracks both Tier I and Tier II diversity spending. In 2022, supplier diversity spending totaled more than $200 million.
