Commitments made by energy companies to improve gender equality are failing to consistently deliver, in part due to unsupportive company cultures, a new report has revealed.
The report from the Powerful Women group highlighted the barriers that still exist in middle management in the UK energy sector and suggested how to resolve these.
Elizabeth Baxter, Powerful Women board member and co-author of the report said: “We wanted to understand why women continue to be under-represented in the UK energy industry, including in the pipeline to executive roles. The sector faces immense challenges as it transforms and upskills for the energy transition and responds to evolving customer demands. It is essential that companies secure and cultivate the best and most diverse talent for success.”
The latest statistics from Energy & Utilities Skills showed the female percentage of the workforce last year was 18.3% – compared to a UK-wide proportion of 47.3%.
Despite making commitments to boost diversity and be more inclusive, the report suggested this was not effectively cascaded down to all levels of organisations as policies were not backed up through company culture.
Olga Muscar, senior partner at Bain & Co and co-author of the report, added: “The results of our research have given us some fascinating insights into women’s lived experience in the UK energy workplace. On one hand the work highlighted the strong commitment of the energy sector to gender diversity, and all the progress already made. On the other hand, it revealed a delivery gap in well intended initiatives being put in place, but not consistently delivering on their promises.”
Most companies were found to have a keen interest in redressing gender inequality and had inclusion policies in place but these were not being used and company culture did not support the initiatives.
The report highlighted that mentoring and coaching programmes were of inconsistent quality and accessibility for many women. Likewise where flexible working policies that support a home/work balance did exist, women reported fears of being overlooked for career opportunities if they used them and reported “benevolent sexism” towards those who did use them.
A lack of role models was also cited as a hinderance to aspiration and career progress. Last year women occupied just 14% of executive director roles in the industry and 62 of the 80 largest employers had no women on their boards.
To close the gap, the report called on senior leaders to take ownership of closing the middle management gender gap by offering solutions that are appropriate to the needs of their organisation.
Managers should be empowered and equipped with the skills and confidence to have constructive conversations about issues that could close the delivery gap such as about flexible working and development options.
The report found there are key areas energy company leaders should address to remove barriers in their own companies for women to have fair and equal opportunities.
It suggested “asking the right questions” to get results around setting targets for the number of women in middle management and how to actively meet them, which could include assessing current recruitment methods.
Organisations should look at the attractiveness and effectiveness of flexibility options on offer, if people use them, and how many people believe flexible working could hold their career options back.
Furthermore, the report recommended assessing company culture and asking how it can be made more inclusive, and whether people feel respected, valued and equally assessed in the workplace.