Changing culture is key to retaining women in energy

Despite efforts of energy companies to attract more women into the sector, there are serious concerns about poor retention rates among female employees. Ahead of the annual gender pay gap reporting deadline, Adam John speaks to the experts and finds out what the distribution network operators are doing to tackle a lack of gender diversity in a heavily male-dominated industry.

“I’m a woman working in energy, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked to make the tea.” If there was ever a quote to summarise why the energy sector has such a poor retention rate of female employees, it’s this shocking anonymous anecdote from an upcoming report by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

With some companies showing slight decreases in the number of women in their workforces in recent years, and others only marginal increases, making energy an attractive career proposition for women is high up on the agenda for distribution network operators (DNOs). But for Louise Parry, director of people and organisational development at Energy and Utility Skills, it’s retaining women in the sector that is the real challenge.

“So we can see women are joining the sector. But what we can also see is that they’re leaving pretty much at the same levels as they’re joining. So the diversity of the workforce, as a result, isn’t going to change,” Parry tells Utility Week.

She cites the latest ONS figures which show that while there was an improvement in the numbers of women in the power sector overall between 2017 and 2021, there was a decline from 2020 to 2021.

Furthermore, she adds, the number of female managers, directors and senior officials has reduced by 24% since 2017.

“So why aren’t women staying in the sector? What are the reasons that women are leaving? The deductions that you can take is that the culture isn’t right.

“So whether they’re not getting the opportunities to progress, they’re not being able to get the promotions or simply the culture, the working hours, doesn’t suit their personal circumstances.

“There’ll be many drivers for that so what I would want to see is a greater understanding of the reasons why women then leave.”

She points to an upcoming report by the Royal Academy of Engineering in which a female employee is quoted as saying something along the lines of: “‘I’m a woman working in energy, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked to make the tea’. It is that that we need to change”.

Role models

According to Parry some of the cultural barriers include the fact many women can’t see themselves in a more senior role, and this is an area National Grid and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) are keen to combat.

“I think as a more personal observation, companies that have set targets for representation and have a lot of female representation in their leadership ranks, create role models and that attracts more women into the organisation. There was that classic phrase, ‘if you can’t see it, you can’t be it’,” says Cordi O’Hara, incoming president of National Grid Electricity Distribution.

Women make up 38% of National Grid’s senior leadership group, while its board is 40% female. Meanwhile the company’s latest available stats show that the overall proportion of women in its UK workforce is 28% – an improvement of just over 2% since 2018.

O’Hara says National Grid has some “phenomenal female engineers” in its organisation, pointing to Alice Delahunty, president of electricity transmission, as well as Roisin Quinn, the first female engineer to run the real time operation of the Electricity System Operator’s control rooms.

“So I think we actually have engineering female role models in the company, which is fabulous,” she adds.

“The more role models you have at higher levels is then more attractive for the future generations to say ‘I can see myself represented at those levels’,” agrees Jenni Stephen, head of HR at SSEN.

According to its latest figures just under 27% of SSEN Distribution’s workforce is female, while across SSE as a whole women account for just under 29% of its workforce – down from just over 31% in 2018, although the company has since sold its retail arm. Its board meanwhile is evenly split.

The company believes in the power of imagery to showcase its diverse talent, ensuring different groups are represented in its media output.

Stephen adds: “We’ve done a real big piece about share of voice and share of imagery around gender balance in everything that we’re putting out into the media.

“I’m sure if I look back 8-10 years, any imagery around the power sector would predominantly be white male. And it’s not anymore, we are deliberately forcing that representation of real people, real staff who want to do this, who want to role model.”

Flexible shift patterns

The country’s biggest DNO meanwhile, UK Power Networks (UKPN), recognises the role of flexible working patterns in helping to retain its female employees. Its latest figures show men make up around 79% of staff, with women accounting for the remaining 21% – up only slightly on the 20% reported in 2018.

Jean Kelly, learning and development specialist at UKPN, says the ability to work flexibly is “an important factor in attracting and retaining women”.

She adds: “Following the experience of the pandemic, we now run a blended working model to enable home working. In addition, a project is underway to identify and increase the number of roles offered as flexible (eg. job share, part-time) to support working mothers to progress.”

Kelly adds that UKPN undertook a review of the experiences of maternity returner and parental leave takers which has led the introduction of in-house coaches to support both this group and their managers.

“We are currently progressing other recommendations such as the creation of a maternity/parental returners toolkit,” she adds.

Making the sector attractive

While there is much work ongoing to retain female employees, the gender split across each DNO shows there is still a mountain to climb in terms of actually attracting women into the sector in the first place.

As Adam McEnaney, Northern Powergrid’s workforce resilience programme lead, observes: “Our gender pay gap continues to reflect the balance of men and women in our business and the roles they carry out; it’s not about pay equality.

“The proportion of men in the traditionally higher-paid technical and engineering roles, which make up the majority of our workforce, has a significant impact on gender pay.”

In its latest figures, covering April 2022, Northern Powergrid has reported a 0.2% increase in its gender pay gap, which it says was largely a result of the timing of a new pay deal for colleagues being secured after April 2022. Across the Northern Powergrid group, men get paid on average 24.5% more than women in hourly pay and 40.6% more in bonus.

McEnaney says the company is creating more than 1,000 new job opportunities in its region by 2028, which will give the DNO “great potential” for it to reduce its gender pay gap.

“We acknowledge that 80% of our total workforce (over 1,900 people) are men and in the operational craft, engineering and technical roles, that grows to over 94% (on average).

“Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) plan prioritises attracting women to apply for these types of roles; as new entrants to the energy sector, or by switching roles within Northern Powergrid.”

The company’s figures are a slight improvement to what it reported in 2018, when men made up 83% of its total workforce.

Getting the message out early to school and university students is another way the DNOs are working to improve the gender split.

At Electricity North West for example women made up only 25% of the workforce as of 31 March 2022, similar to figures reported in 2018. In total 32% of its leadership roles are held by women.

Its diversity and inclusion manager, Cheryl Iontton, believes engaging those of high school age “is key”.

She explains: “So last year we ran work placements and we had 20+ students come through the door and spend a week with us.

“When they came, they just didn’t know what they wanted to do as a career but by the end of the week they were saying ‘I want to be an operational engineer, I want to be a design engineer, I want to work in IT…’even if that doesn’t end up being the case, they walked away with not just understanding what we did but the roles and the different types of roles that are available.”

She adds that this year the DNO will dedicate one of its work placement weeks to all girls.

Sharing similar views is O’Hara: “We’ve also been looking at how do we source talent through our pipelines, whether that’s graduate programs, and our apprenticeships. And now we’re actually seeking out a broader set of schools, a broader set of universities and colleges, where we might find deeper representation, new talent pools that we hadn’t necessarily thought of before.”

Additionally there is a recognition that language has an important role to play in improving gender balance, with concerns over masculine language being used in job adverts.

Iontton says the DNO has examined how inclusive its language is in advertising by using AI technology which scans the company’s job adverts.

“It doesn’t just look at gender, it’s all areas of inclusivity. It then reaches out and speaks to everybody and we are not unknowingly excluding anybody,” she says.

It’s clear there is a lot of positive action being taken to improve gender diversity but there is still a long way to go before we have a truly inclusive industry.