diamondback energy
Corporate Responsibility Report
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The well-being of our employees and contractors matters at Diamondback. Through our company-wide efforts to minimize workplace incidents and prepare for other unexpected events, protecting our people and creating an environment where they can thrive is a fundamental component of our corporate responsibility efforts.

We also value the perspectives, experiences, and ideas contributed by our employees from a diverse range of ethnic, cultural, and ideological backgrounds. As our number of employees has increased significantly in recent years, we continue to focus on our company culture and on maintaining a positive workplace environment.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

We continue to cultivate an inclusive and respectful work environment that encourages our employees to achieve their full potential.

Diamondback’s employee base has grown nearly 390% over the past two years. As part of that growth, we actively seek to attract and retain an increasingly diverse workforce.

At the end of 2018, women held 28% of all management positions and 42% of all professional positions at Diamondback, compared with 23% and 24%, respectively, in 2017. The overall proportion of minority employees in our company also increased to 22% in 2018, compared with 18% in 2017 and 16% in 2016.

Equal employment opportunity is a core tenet within our People Policies Handbook. All employment decisions are based on merit, qualifications, and abilities. Employees can raise questions or concerns about any type of potential discrimination in our workplace—without fear of reprisal— to the Human Resources department or through our tollfree Compliance Hotline.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Diamondback, like other companies in the energy industry, provides many entry-level jobs in addition to employing people with professional degrees. We support our employees in pursuing opportunities to expand their professional skills, and we offer training sessions at our various locations.

Offerings in 2018 included a Social Styles course designed to improve teamwork by helping employees understand the differences in each other’s approaches to communication, problem solving, and other interactions in the workplace.

HEALTH AND SAFETY

We operate under the belief that all safety incidents should be preventable. Our primary focus is on keeping Diamondback employees and those working with us out of harm’s way.

Our formal health and safety program includes employee training and new-hire orientation on a variety of environmental and safety topics, including proper reporting. It also ensures employees have all necessary equipment to operate safely.

We use robust tracking methods and work closely with regulatory organizations to prevent incidents, implement controls and countermeasures, and comply with all applicable regulations.

Identifying Potential Hazards

We strive to give our employees a greater role and stronger voice in helping us identify where improvements should be made to better keep people out of harm’s way. In 2018, Diamondback launched a mobile application that allows field employees to identify and immediately report incidents, potential hazards, and near misses.

Employees can upload a summary and photos of the hazardous situation from their smartphone, tablet, or laptop. The mobile application has replaced the paper notecards that people used to fill out by hand and submit at the end of their shift. Our reporting is now fast and accurate, resulting in more timely corrective actions.

Workplace Incidents

Diamondback has a record of zero work-related fatalities from 2016–2018. However, our total OSHA recordable cases— comprising work-related injuries and illnesses that require medical treatment beyond first aid—rose in 2018, but our combined total recordable incident rate (TRIR) for employees and contractors remained below the industry average.

Two recordable cases involving Diamondback employees during 2018—after having zero such cases from 2015– 2017—increased our TRIR for employees in 2018.

USING GPS TO PROMOTE SAFER DRIVING

Our vehicle incident rate climbed in 2018. We are working to turn this trend around through additional driver training and safety monitoring technologies.

All Diamondback vehicles (excluding those acquired through the merger with Energen in November 2018) are equipped with global positioning system (GPS) technology that monitors safety-related driving practices such as speed, acceleration, braking, and cornering rate. We plan to equip Energen vehicles with GPS by the third quarter of 2019. If daily GPS snapshots show a pattern of risky behavior behind the wheel for a specific employee, we intervene with additional coaching to reinforce safe practices. We also reward employees who maintain a safe driving record and those who demonstrate marked improvement. In addition, the GPS technology helps our drivers find the shortest and most efficient routes for their daily work—saving fuel and reducing emissions.

SCREENING OF CONTRACTORS

Since 2016, Diamondback has been working with PEC Safety, a national organization that collects safety and environmental incident data on contractors who work in our production operations. Contractors upload Diamondback-specific information every quarter, which PEC Safety grades as green (low incident), yellow (moderate incident), or red (high incident). This relationship allows us to manage risk by having more data beyond what could otherwise be gathered.

We expanded our use of these tools and data in 2018 and continue to do so in 2019. Contractors are evaluated on 14 different criteria, such as having a formal safety program, a written safety manual, employee background checks, and clear requirements for personal protective equipment.

PEC’s machine learning and predictive modeling technology helps us evaluate the likelihood of a contractor having a recordable incident over a three-month period. As a result, we are managing risk by identifying areas where we most need to focus on preventing workplace accidents and injuries.

EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND AWARENESS

Our people undergo training and education each year on regulatory compliance, industry standards and innovative opportunities to effectively manage the challenges of developing our resources. Topics include supervisory training, harassment training, and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance training.

We stepped up our efforts to educate Diamondback employees and contractors on safety protocols in 2018. Examples include setting more explicit safety goals among our operations teams and scheduling additional, mandatory training sessions focused on the root causes behind incidents.

Our field operations personnel refresh their safety training on a monthly basis. We devoted approximately 1,854 personnel-hours to various safety topics in 2018, including:

  • Spill prevention and control
  • Defensive driving
  • First aid and CPR
  • Civilian response to crisis scenarios