Driving Diversity & Inclusion in Energy and Oceans

As a global consultancy group, where our most important asset is our people, promoting the Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) of our industry and the sectors in which we work, is of paramount importance and lies at the heart of who we are as an organisation.

The D&I of our sectors and STEM industries is not only right, but also aligns with our own Group values of excellence, sustainability and one team. We understand that the diversity of our teams is critical to driving the technical excellence and innovation that is needed to deliver energy today and accelerate the transition to a net-zero future. One critical step to achieving this goal, is to continue to engage with the data, and align our actions and initiatives off that.

To mark International Women’s Day 2024, we are pleased to share some news on recent initiatives by ABL Group in driving the D&I of our energy and oceans.

The D&I Task Force

Studies have shown that a focus on D&I efforts increases employee engagement, improves employee fulfilment and encourages an inclusive culture.

To support these efforts, as part of our ESG commitments and social development strategy at ABL Group, we have recently restructured our Social Task Force to include a D&I Sub-Task Force, chaired by Adriana Vargas-Colwill.

“The D&I sub-task force is a dedicated channel to identify how ABL Group can continually enhance the inclusivity for women and all people including minorities. Our objective is to ensure we are always building on our processes and culture to ensure a feeling of belonging for everyone, as well as relevance within the organisation. This in turn can empower our people to thrive at work and in their personal lives. Personally, I am delighted at this initiative and how it is growing, as it reflects our Group commitment to inspiring inclusion, particularly given the ongoing challenges we still see to D&I in STEM industries.”

Adriana Vargas-Colwill, Chair of the ABL Group Sub-Task Force on D&I

The task force aims to raise awareness of D&I questions across the group and foster initiatives to ensure we are responding in a way that all employees can participate in. Broken down into a series of focussed working groups, this structure allows to generate actions against a number of key charters:

• Data Working Group: Improving data quality and data collection for more efficient analysis and communication to our teams. This in turn supports data-based action to tackle topics like gender pay gap among other things
• Company Policies Working Group: Supporting HR operations in crafting best practice policies
• Governance & Leadership Working Group: Bringing together employees from our many global offices to develop and implement a D&I strategy for the whole group
• Employee Resource Working Group: To be launched this year, and to provide a forum where colleagues, who share common interests and values, can communicate and support one another in the workplace

Maternity Coaching & STEM Returners

Lara Lawrie – Director of Environment and Consents for OWC, the renewable energy consultancy arm of ABL Group, has today shared her thoughts on how looking at the UK, women continue to face social and professional barriers when attempting to return to work following a career break, whether for maternity leave or other childcare reasons.

This leads to a knock-on effect on the diversity of top management positions across STEM careers, which in-turn can negatively impact the perception of young professionals aspiring to join the industry.

In an article release by RenewableUK today to mark IWD2024, Lawrie says:

“The theme around returning to work is recurrent and PwCs research into female returners found that 76% of professional women on career breaks want to return to work but “many returning women move into lower-skills work due to recruitment biases against CV gaps” (PwC, 2016). The perception that a gap in your CV means a deterioration in skills, results in three in five women being occupationally downgraded. For STEM that means we’re underutilising a capable, skilled pool of resources”

Lara Lawrie, Director of Environment and Consents, OWC

OWC has successfully championed two initiatives in the past year, which seek to stem the challenges women face in breaking the career break curse.

Maternity coaching is one such initiative, that has been offered to support employees at OWC in the UK, in preparing for their maternity leave. The programme provides impartial support in both the emotional and practical elements of preparing to take a career break, with regular touch points prior, during and post the maternity leave.

“OWC sponsored me to do a maternity coaching course with an independent coach, to help me prepare for taking time away from my work to have my 1st child. Just the offer in itself provided considerable relief to me, to know that I would not be alone in planning for my maternity leave and how to best set the team up for my departure.”

Kathleen Bull, Group Director for Marketing

OWC also forged a successful partnership with STEM Returners, which aims to help engineers overcome the ‘career break curse’. The programme provides mentorship and real work experience to candidates, with over 50% being female. Read more about the programme and OWC’s partnership with STEM Returners here.

Inspiring inclusion every day

Though International Women’s Day is one day per year, we aim to embody the values of IWD everyday through our policies and actions. We should continuously celebrate the achievements of women, particularly in an industry where women are often underrepresented. Now is the time to take action to implement policies which advance our Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goals 5 (Gender Equality) and 10 (Reduced Inequalities); promote STEM outreach to ensure a diverse and equitable workplace, and continue to develop our Diversity & Inclusion initiatives to fully embed them in our organisation.

Wishing all women across our industries, energy and oceans and all over the world a wonderful 8th March!

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Here is a special message from some of the amazing women who work across ABL Group companies, discussing in 5 or less words, what ‘inspiring inclusion’ means to them: