Home Equity, diversity and inclusion at ElectraLink

Foreword from CEO                                                                   Back to about us

 

ElectraLink’s business is its people. Therefore, if we want to thrive, we want to ensure that we have the best people, and that those people can bring the best of themselves to work. On that basis, we are on a journey to make ElectraLink fully inclusive, allowing us to attract top talent from the widest possible talent pool and break down any potential barriers that could be holding us or the industry back from attracting that talent. This is not just about recruitment however, we also want to ensure that our business allows people to be themselves at work by recognising and celebrating diversity and enabling everyone to deliver to their full potential.

Simply publishing a strategy will not deliver this intent. Every member of the ElectraLink team living and breathing this philosophy will deliver this strategy, with proactive management and measurement of the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) of the business. ElectraLink is unashamed to say it wants to be a leader in EDI across the energy industry and to act as a role model for other organisations to benchmark against.

Background

 

In developing this strategy, we took an inclusive approach and actively sought out examples of best practice to try and reflect the principles on which the strategy is based.

We understood that we were not the experts in this field so wanted to seek some external guidance, along with an independent assessment of how we were currently performing. We worked with a specialist external agency who assessed our current state to be between levels one and two in the Deloitte D&I maturity model.

This helped us to understand where we were performing well and where we needed to improve and set us on our journey to develop this strategy.

As well as seeking external guidance and assessment, we also recognised the value of the perspectives and experiences of our own people so set up an internal EDI focus group. This group had one of the best sign-up rates for any of our internal committees, demonstrating the value our people place on EDI.

This focus group worked with our external providers to feed into the assessment and helped to clarify the purpose that guides our EDI strategy.

Purpose

 

We felt it was important to develop a shared understanding of the purpose of our EDI strategy and worked with our EDI focus group who identified that the EDI strategy:

  • Should make sure employees feel accepted and valued within the company, which improves performance and retention.
  • Should improve employee engagement and increase job satisfaction.
  • Should ensure people feel valued.
  • Should increase the feeling of belonging amongst colleagues.
  • Should minimise the risk of internal conflict.
  • Should maximise on the value of different perspectives, building successful diverse teams and promoting an innovative culture.
  • Should improve our customer engagement and experience.
  • Should increase the pride in where we work.
  • Should attract the best talent from the widest candidate pool, recognising that EDI is a factor for many top performing employees
  • Should create an environment free of judgement and encourage trust.
  • Is simply the right thing to do.

What has been achieved so far

 

Though this document represents the launch of our EDI strategy, we did not wait to make immediate improvements where we could, with support from our EDI forum.

Actions to date include:

Introduction of anonymised recruitment.

Introduction of anonymised recruitment.

Introduction of an EDI dedicated page on the ElectraLink company intranet (SIMON).

Introduction of an EDI dedicated page on the ElectraLink company intranet (SIMON).

Development of an internal anonymous feedback mechanism where ideas and also issues can be raised.

Development of an internal anonymous feedback mechanism where ideas and also issues can be raised.

Company-wide EDI training.

Company-wide EDI training.

An initial EDI survey to understand the “as is” position.

An initial EDI survey to understand the “as is” position.

The development of an initial EDI focus group.

The development of an initial EDI focus group.

A review of our policies and company handbook.

A review of our policies and company handbook.

Redeveloped our company values, including introducing a new value that specially speaks to inclusivity. We also introduced a set of associated behaviours so that everyone is clear on what to expect and what is expected of them.

Redeveloped our company values, including introducing a new value that specially speaks to inclusivity. We also introduced a set of associated behaviours so that everyone is clear on what to expect and what is expected of them.

Vision

 

ElectraLink’s EDI vision is to become a leading example of best practice in equity, diversity and inclusion, ensuring equity of opportunity, recognising the value of diversity, and creating an environment in which everyone is supported and encouraged to thrive. The ambition to be an active ally for change, and a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination, underpins this vision.

This vision recognises the importance of EDI in the delivery of our wider business vision and the importance of leveraging different perspectives to stimulate creativity and innovation, which are central to our purpose.

All the senior management of ElectraLink hold this vision and it applies to everyone in the organisation.

 Pillars

 

Our strategy centres around three key pillars which represent our key priorities and guide all activity in this space. Each pillar has a clear objective as well as a set of outcomes that we will use to measure our success.

Pillar 1 – Ensuring Equity

Objective

Improve our capability and confidence to proactively address opportunities and challenges of equity.

 

Outcomes

> Equal opportunities.
> Fair treatment.
> Fair reward.

Pillar 2 - Valuing diversity

Objective

Build and sustain a diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of the UK, while recognising the value diversity brings and creating an environment that allows diversity to thrive.

 

Outcomes

> Everyone’s unique identities are valued and their contribution recognised.

> ElectraLink attracts and retains the widest range of talent.

> Employee and team performance improves.

Pillar 3 - Creating an inclusive culture

Objective

Create a truly inclusive culture, rooted in respect, that increases engagement.

 

Outcomes

> Under-represented groups are actively included and are able to contribute from their unique perspective.

> ElectraLink creates a sense of belonging, allowing their people to bring their whole selves to work by ensuring psychological safety.

> Everyone is treated with and treat others with respect.

 Approach | 5-year plan

 

Our five-year plan is the mechanism by which we will deliver against our strategy. It is broken down into streams to reflect the focus of the activity we will deliver in each year. While these streams describe where we will put our focus in each year, if there are quick wins we can make across any stream we will not wait to make them. Similarly, if we identify issues that urgently need action, these too will be addressed.


It is also designed in such a way that the activity in each stream does not stop after the first year in which it begins. Instead, each stream continues across the five years to ensure we continually improve.

Learning and understanding | Internal  improvement |  Playing our part externally |

Learning and Understanding

 

We believe that delivering our objectives begins with improving our understanding and being willing to learn. This includes:

 

  • Seeking out best practice and learning how this can apply to ElectraLink.
  • Gaining a better understanding of how well we are currently performing, including seeking external assessment.
  • Understanding our “as is” position by gathering data but recognising that that means creating the right environment in which our people feel comfortable to share.
  • Understanding ourselves as individuals, including providing the tools that help our people to understand themselves.
  • Learning from others’ experience, not just in terms of best practice but also people’s lived experience to help build empathy.
  • Formal training to ensure we maximise on opportunities and address any issues.
  • Developing a set of values and behaviours that allow us to understand how we are expected to behave and what we can expect from others.
  • Learning through the recognition of key dates in the calendar and the celebration of cultural events.

Internal improvement

 

The grounding of our learning and understanding work will ensure that we are acting on solid reasoning. We will then begin to focus on the improvements we can make internally. This will include:

 

  • Addressing any issues that have come out of our analysis.
  • Ensuring our policies and processes support our EDI objectives, and do not put in any unforeseen barriers.
  • Establishing targets where relevant to drive our objectives forward.
  • Enhancing our approach to recruitment to maximise on the diversity of our people.
  • Continually embedding our values and behaviours.
  • Creating a safe space where people feel comfortable raising any issues so we can learn where we are going wrong, change and grow.
  • Defining realistic and ambitious goals to make impactful change.

Playing our part externally

 

Once we feel we are making sufficient improvement internally, we will expand our focus to how we can make a difference more widely, with a focus on the energy industry.

Actively seeking out opportunities to join market wide groups.

Actively seeking out opportunities to join market wide groups.

Signing up to energy-wide or relevant national initiatives.

Signing up to energy-wide or relevant national initiatives.

Developing case studies and speaking out publicly on our learnings and the value this work has brought.

Developing case studies and speaking out publicly on our learnings and the value this work has brought.

Understanding how we can contribute to making the energy industry attractive to a more diverse pool of potential candidates.

Understanding how we can contribute to making the energy industry attractive to a more diverse pool of potential candidates.

Understanding how we can contribute to improve the pipeline of future workers in the energy industry, such as supporting STEM activities in schools.

Understanding how we can contribute to improve the pipeline of future workers in the energy industry, such as supporting STEM activities in schools.

Annual action plan

 

To ensure we our strategy is continually driving forward, we will build and update an action plan based on this strategy on at least an annual basis.

We also recognise that if EDI is to improve across the energy industry, it is important not to operate in a vacuum and to share any learnings we gather through our journey. For that reason, we commit to communicating both our successes and our learnings when things do not go as well.

How will we measure success?

 

For every initiative, we will begin by defining specific qualitative and quantitative metrics to measure our success. We will use these measures to objectively monitor and measure throughout the five-year period. We will also benchmark our progress against best practice, using feedback, data, engagement and external assessment to objectively assess our success.

Feedback

> We will use feedback to better understand our employee experience and find out if they feel that we are making progress. We will do this by:

> Conducting surveys.

> Collecting feedback through our EDI focus group.

> Reviewing feedback from our anonymous whistle-blower website tool.

Procuring stakeholder feedback.

Engagement

> We will engage at every level of the business to fully understand the impact of our actions by:

> Monitoring the level of active senior management engagement in our plans.

> Monitoring the engagement of our people.

External assessment

> We will use external experts to assess our success by:

> Auditing our data

> Reviewing our achievements

> Benchmarking us against best practice