A key priority of the Energy & Utilities Workforce Renewal Skills Strategy 2020 is attracting and recruiting more diverse talent into our sector which reflects our local communities. Currently, our sector is not yet representative of the UK workforce for gender, BAME, disability, and under 24s. Only 5% of the sector’s employees are from black, Asian or minority ethnic groups compared to 15% nationally; most of our workforce is male and white.
Facing this challenge, CEOs from the sector’s leading businesses have committed to proactively changing these statistics and promote their businesses to under-represented talent. The Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership is committed to recruiting and attracting a workforce that mirrors and speaks to the communities it serves.
The Inclusion Commitment was launched in 2019 and is gathering pace, with a series of webinars to learn and share best practice running from July to September.
Five principles underpin the Inclusion Commitment:
- Work collaboratively as a sector to drive change, challenging ourselves to do things differently, by sharing best practice and delivering sector priorities
- Focus on inclusion in its entirety, however our sector history requires targeted sector action to start by increasing gender, BAME and disability workforce representation.
- Measure and be transparent about progress in our individual organisations and as a sector.
- Ensure we create the culture we need to attract the workforce of tomorrow.
- Be inclusive in the way we attract, recruit and develop our people.
Lynn Cooper, Chief Executive of the Institute of Water said:
“The Institute of Water is already committed to a policy of inclusion and equality for all staff, members and stakeholders – Inclusive and Non-Hierarchical are two of our values. Already signatories of the Royal Academy for Engineering, Diversity Concordat and the Science Council Declaration on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, we welcome the opportunity to join the Inclusion Commitment and to work with others in the energy & utilities sector to encourage and enable a more inclusive and diverse culture”.
Louise Parry, Director of People and Organisational Development at Energy & Utility Skills said:
We’re pleased to welcome the Institute of Water as a signatory to the Energy & Utilities Inclusion Commitment. This commitment is underpinned by the sector working collaboratively and the addition of the Institute extends this to include their membership of the many people who currently work or are looking to work in the Water sector.
Reproduced, in part, from the Institute of Water news article.