Our business thrives when our workforce thrives. We are committed to valuing, leveraging and celebrating our teams’ diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. This supports better decision-making, greater innovation, and higher levels of engagement – which ultimately help us advance better health for all.

Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bolsters our business objectives and enables our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) vision. As part of our commitment to transparency, we release an annual DEI report reflecting the company’s approaches and targeted actions to make meaningful progress in DEI across the four pillars of our ESG framework — Healthy Workforce, Healthy Company, Healthy Society, and Healthy Environment.

Below we look at some of the highlights from our recently published 2023 DEI annual report.

Healthy Workforce: Building a culture of inclusion

A healthy and diverse workforce is essential to achieving our mission. We intentionally invest in our employees to support their health and vitality, foster their growth and development, and further cultivate a sense of belonging. Understanding the demographics of our workforce allows us to make more-informed decisions about employee health benefits, training and development, and other programs that we may offer to foster fair opportunity for all without regard to an individual’s race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

• Talent attraction: We are committed to attracting and hiring employees from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We leverage our existing workforce and partner with national and local organizations to reach out to talent from all races, ethnicities, abilities, and genders. In 2023, approximately 96% of the interview slates for external requisitions of senior level individual contributor and above roles included diverse candidates.
• Enterprise Resource Groups (ERGs): We continue to bring DEI to life through our employee-led ERGs, which help support an inclusive culture by creating a safe space for employees to be themselves at work, as well as help inform the business on the special talents that our diverse communities bring. Every year, each ERG organizes a month-long and enterprise-wide celebration that reflects their purpose and culture. These annual celebrations typically include intentional themes, education, external guest speakers, and engaging events to inspire all of our employees.

We’re proud of the recognition we’ve received and each accolade motivates us to set our goals even higher.

• We’re proud to be named #7 on Fair360’s Top Companies for Diversity, up seven spots from 2023.
• We placed #6 overall on the 2024 Most JUST Companies list by JUST Capital and CNBC, up 10 spots from 2023 and the #1 industry leader in health care.
• We scored 100% on the 2023 Disability Equality Index.
• We received our 11th consecutive perfect score for LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index.
• We were recognized as a 4-Star Employer by 2024 VETS Indexes, up from 3 stars in 2023.

Healthy Company: Ethical, resilient and inclusive business practices

We recognize that our practices must be guided by a strong governance framework to ensure ethical and resilient business practices. Our robust governance structure enables us to promote fair and equitable treatment of our employees, customers, partners, and communities to advance our ability to improve the health and vitality of those we serve.

• Responsible supply chain: To support the success of minority- and women-owned businesses and other underrepresented suppliers, we committed to spending $1 billion annually with diverse suppliers by 2025. Two years early, we surpassed this goal by roughly $400 million, achieving a total of $1.4 billion. Looking ahead, we have expanded our commitment to spend even more with diverse suppliers: $1.6 billion annually by 2025.

• Fair pay: We are committed to fairness in pay and opportunity. Our compensation practices, rooted in our pay-for-performance philosophy, promote equity in pay through measures such as benchmarking compensation by role, eliminating questions about applicants’ compensation history, and monitoring for potential disparities.

Healthy Society: Addressing health disparities and investing in our communities

We are guided by our vision to ensure that people have equal opportunity to achieve their full health potential regardless of social, economic, or environmental circumstances.

• Health equity: We offer language and accessibility services to customers and their covered dependents to help them access care and understand and engage with their benefits to improve their health outcomes.
  • In 2023, Cigna Healthcare fulfilled about 18,500 translation requests to support our customers with limited English proficiency.
  • We fulfilled approximately 5,000 requests for health literacy and accessibility to support inclusivity for our customers who are deaf, hard of hearing, vision impaired, or blind.
  • To help remove language barriers that may prevent individuals from understanding how to take their medications, Express Scripts Pharmacy by Evernorth offers all customers the option to receive prescription materials in Spanish or in English. This includes text on prescription containers and accompanying information.
• Community resilience: In 2023, our commitment to local communities continued to align to our mission of improving the health and vitality of those who need us most.
  Our community engagement comes to life through the work of The Cigna Group Foundation, corporate giving, and employee giving and volunteerism. Through these avenues, charitable contributions in 2023 totaled nearly $51 million.

  

Healthy Environment: Advancing environmental health for all communities

There is an intrinsic connection between human health and environmental health, and the negative impacts of climate change can disproportionately impact children, older adults, low-income families, individuals with underlying health issues, and underserved populations, contributing to further health inequities.

We strive to identify efficiencies and make strategic investments that reduce our environmental impacts – advancing environmental health for all communities.

• Reducing emissions and increasing accessibility with virtual care: We estimate that approximately 9,100 metric tons of emissions from gas-powered vehicles were avoided in 2023 as a result of patients using our MD Live virtual care services instead of driving to and from a clinic.

  

• Green space revitalization: In Texas, we are working with the city of Houston and the Mayor’s Office of Complete Communities to improve parks in under-resourced neighborhoods in order to promote family health and vitality. To help encourage physical activity for children and families, we sponsor the Park Partners initiative with the Houston Parks Board, which supports the revitalization of local parks. Approximately 3,000 children, adults, and seniors will be within walking distance of the improved parks and green spaces.

Delivering on our promises

As we look forward to the future, The Cigna Group is proud to deliver on the commitments outlined in the Building Equity and Equality Program (BEEP), a five-year initiative launched in 2020 to expand and accelerate our efforts to support DEI for traditionally underrepresented communities. The initiatives established under BEEP have been woven into the fabric of how we operate day-to-day, embedded and accounted for in our standard enterprise-wide business practices.

While achieving each of the commitments for this program is a testament to our progress, our work is far from over. Our dedication to this work continues – and we remain committed to making meaningful progress toward DEI.