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OPERATING SAFELY

Safety is not just a core value — it distinguishes the way we operate and work together. Through sustained effort over many decades, we have made significant progress toward reducing injuries in our workplace, and we are committed to ongoing improvements on our journey to operating injury-free.

We use a common set of simple, proven tools to manage safety effectively. We focus on eliminating our highest risks via preventive safety measures, such as hazard identification and elimination, and we proactively share key learnings and critical actions across our organization. Our Recordable Incident Rate (the number of Occupational Safety and Health Administration-defined recordable injuries and illnesses that occur in 100 workers working in one year) dropped from over 10 in 1990 to 1.89 in 2023. Any injury is one too many, but we are encouraged by the progress we have made to mitigate our highest-risk areas and reduce the number and type of injuries our people experience at work.

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Building An Inclusive Culture

Inclusion is a core value at ¹ú²ú×ÔÅÄ, and we believe our work on diversity, equity and inclusion is critical for our company and our society. Our goal is to create a truly inclusive work environment where the diversity of our communities is reflected at all levels of our company and everyone has equitable opportunities to contribute, learn and grow.

To help accomplish this, we established an Inclusion Council of 25 diverse employees from all corners of our company who regularly share their ideas about how we can accelerate progress, champion inclusion within their own teams, and support the implementation of our DE&I strategies.

Each year, we set goals to drive improvement in three key areas: leadership, people and culture. We then monitor how well those actions drive improvement over time. In 2023, our work included educating top leaders about inclusive leadership, expanding our online DE&I training options for all employees, growing our employee resource groups from four to seven, launching a 21-day DE&I challenge, monitoring the diversity of our hiring teams, and strengthening our engagement with Historically Black Universities and Colleges. We also regularly promote awareness and education through companywide stories and employee testimonials, and each year we donate about $200,000 to organizations supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in our operating communities.

We certainly have more work to do, but we are proud of the progress we are making on this journey. In our 2023 survey of all employees, 84 percent agreed their work environment is inclusive, an improvement of 2 percent from the last companywide survey.

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DEVELOPING OUR PEOPLE

Our employees want to work for a company that cares about their professional growth, and we want people on our team who, when given equitable opportunities to do so, strive to continually learn and grow throughout their careers.

Our employee development program has a three-pronged approach: formal education and training opportunities, exposure and relationship building, and on-the-job experience that grows skills and competencies.

To facilitate growth in these areas, employees work with their managers to identify the right mix of education, exposure and experience that will help them meet their professional-growth goals. In 2023, 93 percent of our salaried employees had an individual development plan. In these plans, employees identify the leadership and business skills and internal relationships they need to build so they can excel at their current role and/or move into a new opportunity. We provide an online toolkit for employees and managers to use while developing and discussing their plans to help drive meaningful and constructive career-coaching conversations.

We continually sharpen and expand our formal training and education opportunities. We offer three classroom-based leadership development programs, one for each level of leadership: front-line, mid-level and executive. In 2023, more than 300 leaders participated in these programs. In recent years, we have also expanded our suite of asynchronous online learning opportunities and increased our capacity to deliver on-demand virtually facilitated training. In 2023, our employees collectively logged more than 50,000 hours of training in our online learning management system.

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COMPETITIVE PEOPLE PRACTICES

Beyond building a culture of safety, development and inclusion, we also focus on providing competitive pay and benefits that will attract the best talent. We measure the success of our culture and programs through regular employee surveys.

In 2019, we were one of the first companies in our industry to offer paid parental leave; all U.S. nonunion employees may take up to four weeks of fully paid leave upon the arrival of a new child or children in their family. (Our Canadian employees receive parental leave in accordance with provincial employment standards.) This is in addition to our current six-week disability leave for people who give birth, our adoption assistance program and other family-related benefits.

In 2021, we implemented a hybrid work policy that balances on-site work to meet critical business and culture needs with flexibility for some employees to work from home up to two days a week. Our employees are offered a range of medical and healthcare services, including voluntary wellness and health promotion services and programs including tobacco cessation support, health assessments and resources, and worksite health and wellness programs.

As part of our ongoing commitment to listen and respond to employee concerns, we conduct an annual employee feedback survey to gauge responses to a range of workforce factors that drive engagement and retention. In 2023, our overall engagement score was 87 percent (up slightly from the previous year), with 87 percent of employees agreeing they have the training they need to do their jobs well, 84 percent agreeing they’re able to manage their job-related stress, 86 percent agreeing they get enough opportunities to do challenging work, and 80 percent saying they feel like they belong at ¹ú²ú×ÔÅÄ.

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SUPPORTING OUR COMMUNITIES

We operate in communities of all sizes across Canada and the United States, and we want to see these communities thrive. In fact, supporting Rural Communities is one of the three focus areas of our 3 by 30 Sustainability Ambitions. As part of our Rural Communities commitment, we are proud to give our time and money to help these communities remain vibrant places to live and work. In 2023, we provided $6.2 million in charitable giving to the communities where we operate, and our employees completed 676 Tree-Mendous Program volunteer activities and volunteered over 19,300 hours of their time to causes they care about.

Through our companywide employee giving platform, we provide an easy way for all employees to donate to their favorite charities using payroll deduction. Since 2022, we have been matching employee donations and volunteer time up to $1,500 per employee per year. In 2023, we committed more than $530,000 to match eligible donations and volunteer hours logged by our employees to amplify support for nonprofit organizations in their communities.

In 2023, we also launched two new signature programs to further enhance the level of support we provide our rural communities. The first, THRIVE, involves a commitment to invest $5 million across five of our operating communities that are in most need of extra support – starting with Zwolle, Louisiana. Second is a program called Learn Local, Earn Local, which focuses on youth education and workforce development. These are two of the more ambitious community programs we have launched in years, and we look forward to building on the positive impact we have in our communities and helping ensure they remain thriving places to live and do business.

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ENGAGING OUR STAKEHOLDERS  

Our commitment to citizenship goes beyond charitable giving and volunteerism. For us, being a good corporate citizen is also about listening to our neighbors and partners — and working to ensure our company is fully engaged in the communities where we live and work. Our engagement process varies widely based on the project, issue or group, and our stakeholders and partners include everyone from customers and suppliers to investors, employees, communities, policymakers and regulators, Indigenous communities, NGOs and nonprofits, universities and research projects.

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PROMOTING ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION 

Drawing on more than a century of experience in sustainable forestry, we share our story and expertise through tours of our forests and facilities across North America, and we also operate two education centers that are open to the public and provide free access to a range of experiential learning opportunities about forestry, ecology and environmental issues. In Washington, our Mount St. Helens Forest Learning Center tells the story of the eruption of Mount St. Helens and the forest’s return through interactive, hands-on activities and visual displays. In North Carolina, our Cool Springs Environmental Education Center offers a 1,700-acre working forest and outdoor classroom for visitors — including school groups — to showcase sustainable forestry working in harmony with wildlife habitat, air quality, water quality and recreational activities.

In addition to our education centers, staff throughout our operations work with local schools and higher education programs to offer educational tours and interactive experiences in our forests. These engagements offer students opportunities to learn about sustainable forest management and careers in forestry and the forest-products industry.

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PROVIDING RECREATIONAL ACCESS

Our millions of acres of U.S. timberlands include spectacular lakes and hardwood forests in the Northeast, expansive Southern pine forests spanning Virginia to Texas, and remote, rugged mountains and scenic rivers in the Pacific Northwest. Whether your passion is birdwatching, hunting, fishing, camping, hiking or cycling, our forests provide exceptional opportunities for outdoor adventure. We are proud to connect people with everything nature has to offer through our lease and permit programs and open access areas.

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