The Sector's Inclusion Commitment - Energy & Utility Skills

The Sector’s Inclusion Commitment

Launched by the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership, 56 sector organisations are now signed up to five key inclusion principles as part of ensuring workforce resilience.

The Sector's Inclusion Commitment

What is it?

A key priority of the Energy & Utilities Workforce Renewal and Skills Strategy: 2020 is attracting and recruiting more diverse talent into our sector. We serve 67 million people every day and our current workforce fails to fully represent them. We need to attract more women, more people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds,  more people with disabilities and more young people. Only 7% of the sector’s employees are from black, Asian or minority ethnic groups compared to 13% nationally. Most of our workforce is male and white.

Facing this challenge, CEOs from the sector’s leading businesses have committed to proactively change these statistics and make their businesses more attractive and available to under-represented talent. Leveraging its collective impact, the partnership is committed to working across all industries within our sector to recruit and attract a workforce that mirrors and speaks to the communities it serves. Through its work, the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership  is highlighting the great work already being done by the sector as well as continuing to drive change through its ongoing commitment to inclusive attraction, recruitment, and development of its workforce.

The Inclusion Commitment launched in February 2019 and there are now 56 signatories tackling the challenge we face together, recognising that no one company can do this alone if things are to change.



The Inclusion Commitment

We commit to:

  • Ensuring the energy and utilities sector workforce is inclusive and diverse.
    • Being inclusive enables our sector to attract and retain the diverse talent that is crucial to ensuring a resilient workforce.
    • Being inclusive will help us to be more innovative and achieve greater productivity by adapting to our changing environment.
    • Having a diverse workforce ensures we are reflective and inclusive of the customers and communities we serve.

Five principles underpin our Inclusion Commitment:

  1. Work collaboratively as a sector to drive change, challenging ourselves to do things differently, by sharing best practice and delivering sector priorities.
  2. Focus on inclusion in its entirety, however our sector history requires targeted sector action to start by increasing gender, Black, Asian and ethnic minority and disability workforce representation.
  3. Measure and be transparent about progress in our individual organisations and as a sector.
  4. Ensure we create the culture we need to attract the workforce of tomorrow.
  5. Be inclusive in the way we attract, recruit and develop our people.

Phil Beach CBE, Chief Executive, Energy & Utility Skills Group:

“The energy and utilities sector is committed to action on diversity and inclusion, working together to share best practice and build on the great work already in progress. Energy and utilities companies are at the forefront of delivering the 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution to achieve net zero carbon targets in 2050. We need to fill the green jobs being created with truly inclusive and diverse teams.”

Michael Lewis, Chair of the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership and Chief Executive, E.ON UK:

“Working together, our commitment to improving diversity and inclusion in the energy industry will help us to better represent the communities we serve and to provide a working environment where everyone can be themselves, and feel respected and valued.” –


Inclusion Measurement Framework

The Energy & Utilities Inclusion Measurement Framework aligns with the inclusion commitment principle to measure and be transparent about progress with regard to diversity and inclusion in the sector and in individual organisations.

You can view the results from 2023 here.


Sector Demographics

We have released a new detailed snapshot of skills and diversity in the energy and utilities sector, featuring clear and concise infographics that highlight recent changes in the gas, power, water and waste industries, as well as the sector’s supply chain, for which data is now available. Please click on the links below to view the data by industry.


Launch Video


Diversity and Inclusion Videos


Inclusion in Action – Energy & Utilities Jobs

The sector is already collaborating to ensure our industries have a sufficient pipeline of diverse talent entering the sector, whilst retaining quality candidates for the future.
Energy & Utilities Jobs is a collaboration of more than 20 leading organisations that is tasked with raising the attractiveness of the sector as a great place to work and to have a rewarding career..

Energy & Utilities Jobs focuses on delivering targeted campaigns on sector attraction, recruitment and talent retention with youth entrants, Apprentices, Graduates, redeployed professionals and service leavers. There is a focus on reaching underrepresented groups including women, people with disabilities, and people from a black, Asian or ethnic minority background so the opportunities our sector has to offer are more visible to all.

The platform is unique within the sector and specifically designed by and for our members for their talent attraction needs.

Using the strength of our collective brands and values Energy & Utilities Jobs allows us to showcase the sector; our people, our opportunities and careers to talent from all backgrounds.


Resources


Find Out More

If you’re an employer and keen to learn more about the sector’s inclusion commitment and get involved, please contact communications@euskills.co.uk

Want to find out more about a career in the energy & utilities sector? Visit Energy & Utilities Jobs to search jobs and be inspired.

To find out more about membership and our policy work, please contact 0121 713 8255 or email membership@euskills.co.uk. For all press enquiries visit our Media Centre.