Ofgem chief Dermot Nolan has called on the sector to make workforces more diverse following a pledge from the regulator to have 50 per cent female staff by 2025.
The pledge was published today (14 August) with the Powerful Women (PfW) initiative. The regulator initially set out its ambition in its diversity and inclusion strategy, published in March.
Ofgem says it is aspiring to achieve a minimum of 18 per cent ethnic minority representation across all its pay grades, with at least 9 per cent at each grade being women from an ethnic minority.
Nolan added: “We want to become a more diverse organisation, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because we think it will help us to make better decisions.
“Evidence shows that an organisation that has people from a wide range of backgrounds and with a range of experiences will be able to bring together new ideas and challenge established thinking.
“I am calling on the energy sector to also take steps to make their workforces more diverse, particularly at senior levels as that will help make you make better decisions and ultimately better serve your customers.”
As of May 2019 the top 80 energy company boards consisted of 16 per cent women on average, up from 13 per cent last year. As a comparison, the average for the whole of the FTSE 100 is 29 per cent.
Louise Kingham, board member of PfW and chief executive of the Energy Institute, said: “Ofgem’s commitment to drive inclusion and balance in the organisation is very welcome indeed.
“It’s right for the organisation, its people and the customers it ultimately seeks to serve. Ofgem is increasingly holding energy companies to account on this agenda, to understand actions companies are taking to change, and as they progress they will be able to share their learnings too.”
Statistics published by the initiative in May found the progress of getting more women represented on company boards has been “disappointingly slow”.
The figures detailed the composition of boards in the top 80 UK energy companies and revealed that while there are “pockets of success”, progress at board level across the whole sector is slow.
It found there was no improvement for executive board representation from last year with women accounting for just 6 per cent.
Meanwhile 42 per cent of the companies have no women on their boards at all, a small improvement from 50 per cent the year previously.