Striving to thrive in a transitioning sector

The other day I attended the first annual conference of WENA. WENA stands for Women’s Energy Network Alliance, and it has a fantastic motto of ‘leave no woman behind’. This umbrella organisation brings together members from POWERful Women, Women in nuclear, District Heating Divas (now isn’t that a wonderful name?!), Regen Women in Renewable Energy and ALLY Energy. So, a great mix of women from all sorts of professions in energy and to say that there was a buzz in the room is an understatement! The conference was chaired by our own (SGN's) Non-Executive Director Laura Sandys.

The theme was “Striving to thrive in a transitioning sector” and through roundtables and a panel session we discussed and heard about how you might progress your career as a woman in a male dominated sector, what practical actions can we take to improve diversity and once we have talented women – how might we retain them.

There were several take-aways of which I will try and summaries what stood out the most to me.

Improving diversity

We talked about targets and while this can be a tricky subject, there are a few things which have made me convinced we should have targets for not just gender diversity, but diversity overall.

·       What gets measured, gets done.

·       Data shows where you are – and targets show where you would like to be.

·       The power of data: hard numbers can be an effective catalyst for change.

·       Targets do help women. And, if it helps you get there, well, that’s job done!

Other actions to take to improve diversity in your organisation were to recruit on strengths, not just skills as this will open up a wider pool of talent and, to share the values and purpose of the organisation and what tangible impacts the person would have in the role as women (at least those on my table discussion!) are often attracted to this rather than just technical detail.

Progressing your career

There are a few questions you can ask yourself about where you are right now in your career, which can help get you unstuck:

• Are you stereotyped? => Surprise people and do something different!
• Are you siloed? => Break out!
• Are you too good to move? => Look at succession planning, so someone can fill your boots!
• What is your brand? => Who are you? Who do people think you are?

To help you further you might want a coach or a mentor. Remember that it is quite flattering to be asked by someone to be a mentor, so don’t be shy to ask.

A theme that came up time and again, was around women’s confidence. As someone in the room said, confidence is not a personal trait – you just have to practice. And I can fully sign up to this. I am an introvert and following COVID and lockdowns I am having to learn again to network and chat to people I don’t know. It is reassuring to hear that I am not the only one.

And the classic one – just because you don’t tick all the boxes in a job description, does NOT mean you can’t do the job. We are so often looking at the long list of things and saying to ourselves, nah I can’t do that one, or I’ve only done that once, so this can’t be for me. We could not be more wrong and with so many opportunities in the energy sector, now is the time to be brave!

Retaining women

Once you have managed to recruit all these talented women to your organisation, how do you keep them?

Actions noted were about signing up for various accreditation schemes, and don’t use these just a tick box exercise, but an opportunity to show what the organisation stands for, where it currently is and importantly what it is doing to change.

It’s also about creating the right culture, providing mentoring to help women speak up and progressing, companies to publicly disclose data and information on diversity. And if it does not present a rosy picture of a diverse organisation – tell how you are going to get there.

In the end it’s about budling a fabulous company and a better environment – for everyone.