2012 Sustainability Report

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Cultural Transformation

Engendering Openness, Fairness and Trust

The principles of The Way We Work focus on strengthening relationships with the communities we serve, and with all who have a stake in our company.

The guiding principles of The Way We Work are: plan the work and work the plan; seek and accept responsibility; communicate openly; work in teams; improve continuously; and celebrate success.

These form the bedrock of Con Edison’s commitment to strengthening our culture to become a better company. These principles focus on building stronger relationships throughout our communities, and being open, honest, and trusted with our customers, shareholders, public officials, and all who have a stake in our company. We take this trust seriously and we strive to share more information proactively with those whose lives and businesses we affect.

We also look to engage our workforce in open and honest dialogue, and periodically check in with our employees to see how we’re doing.

Two years ago, Con Edison conducted the second company-wide confidential Voice of the Employee survey for Con Edison of New York and O&R. The survey gave employees the opportunity to share their views on significant matters at the company, including their job, work environment, career development, and leadership. The survey assessed employee engagement and measured our results against various benchmarks, including an earlier Voice of the Employee survey conducted in 2009.

The results, once again, clearly identify several strengths. Employees continue to recognize our commitment to operating safely, feel strong connections to the organization, and understand how the work they do contributes to the company’s overall success. Employees reported being confident about the future of the company and believe in senior management taking steps to promote the company’s long-term success. Employees also commented positively on the company’s commitment to improving workplace culture, and mentioned personally seeing the company’s positive efforts to improve in the areas of safety, cost consciousness, and enhancing our relationships with external stakeholders.

The results also provided an effective process for identifying areas in which the company’s employees felt there could be improvement. While some employees reported seeing the company’s efforts to create a more open and trusting environment, most believe that there is still work to be done. We will continue to strive to be open, fair, trusted and trusting, in all our relationships, both externally and internally. We are following our plan to improve the company’s engendering openness, fairness and trust imperative. We know that making progress with respect to this challenging imperative can significantly help to accelerate our cultural transformation. We will continue to target ways to better understand how to assess the success of these efforts. The company’s efforts continue to focus on identifying observable behaviors, recognizing how perceptions become realities and how culture change can only happen as assumptions, mindsets, and ultimately behaviors change. Changing culture is also about cascading new behaviors down throughout the company. This change will take time because behaviors are well-rooted but we will be diligent and persistent in working to bring about this change.

All of our employees are responsible for upholding the strong business ethics that are a core value of Con Edison.