Blog: Women and the energy industry

The chief executives of Ofgem, the Oil and Gas Authority and the Office for Nuclear Regulation are using International Women's' Day (Tuesday 8 March) to call for more diversity and point to the work being done to achieve this in the energy industry.

The energy industry employs hundreds of thousands of people, accounts for some 2.8 per cent of the UK’s GDP and serves around 25 million homes, from the Northern Isles to the Scilly Isles. It keeps the country moving, fed, warm and forms the backbone of our industry and commerce.

It’s a complex business that relies on a workforce of creative, innovative people. It’s also a business that must serve the needs of a huge highly diverse customer base – but still has work to do in reflecting this diversity itself.

In the top 100 UK-headquartered energy companies, only 5 per cent of executive board roles are taken up by women. The picture below board level isn’t much better, some have no women in senior roles at all. The median is just 17 per cent.

At the same time, 56 per cent of UK undergraduates are female, so something somewhere is going wrong. Our industry is missing out on diverse perspectives, different insights and a variety of opportunities. So why aren’t more women making it in energy?

POWERful Women

The Oil and Gas Authority, Office for Nuclear Regulation and Ofgem recognise these challenges, and are part of the POWERful Women initiative. POWERful Women is an organisation launched by Baroness Verma and Laura Sandys that is bringing together people from across the industry, academia, government and regulators to get more women into senior positions in the sector, and make energy an attractive career option for women at all levels.

We must continue to attract women to, and retain women in, our industry; including at the top levels of organisations where major decisions are made.

If we don’t, we risk under-representing half the population. And this means that organisations are not only fishing from just one part of the talent pool, but they are also missing the chance to diversify the way they think about and approach difficult decisions.

Broadening the range of talent, including attracting more women, introduces new thinking, new approaches and steers organisations away from groupthink.

POWERful Women exists to advance women’s professional growth and leadership in the UK’s energy industry. Its events help to grow a community of women and men focused on creating real change in the energy industry. Through POWERful Women individuals and organisations can share good practices and experiences, provide mentors for women on the cusp of senior positions, and provide a platform for women already making a strong contribution to addressing the industry’s issues today.

Meeting the challenges of the future

There’s always been a need for people to think differently in this industry to meet the country’s changing demands and needs.

We have found previously hidden reserves of hydrocarbons thanks to 2D, 3D and now 4D seismic innovations. Technological advances have seen sources like renewable power become increasingly efficient; allowing us to diversify the way energy is generated. Meanwhile, the public are beginning to interact with their energy supply as we move towards a ‘smart’ era.

By challenging convention, pushing boundaries and going further, the sector has been able to break through seemingly impossible barriers.

Connecting a nation’s energy supply, keeping it running during everything the British weather can throw at it, and balancing power demand and supply minute-by-minute takes technology and logic processing that would have seemed outrageously far-fetched as 1960s sci-fi visions of the future.

Yet continuing to think differently also means making sure our industry has the best talent to pick from. Getting the most from our people is vital in helping us face the challenges ahead.

On the customer-facing side of our industry, suppliers need to continue to improve their customer relationships, and show they understand customers’ needs. Having a workforce that best reflects the customer base is important in achieving this. If the people in our industry don’t talk or look like the majority of energy users, making those connections which build trust and confidence will be much harder, and take much longer.

Our mothers and grandmothers

Successive legislation, academic research, and cultural change have made the working environment very different to the one our mothers and grandmothers were part of. But now there are other, less obvious attitudes holding organisations back: unconscious discrimination, attitudes and pre-conceived notions about women in the workplace.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently tackled an example of these less obvious obstacles when he responded to a post about his personal ambitions for 2016.

One lady said: “I keep telling my granddaughters to date the nerd in school, he may turn out to be a Mark Zuckerberg!”

Mark found the time to respond, and pointed out that actually: “Even better would be to encourage them to *be* the nerd in their school so they can be the next successful inventor!”

His message was simple. It’s about setting the bar as high for all women as it is for men, and giving them the same ambitions. It may just be semantics, but this kind of message is where the next wave of progress will come from.