Our People

Supporting every colleague to be themselves to better serve our customers and communities

Lead SDGs supported

SDG 8 - Work & Economic growth SDG5 - Gender Equality

Office Environment People Gathered Around Laptop

Our goals

By 2030, we want to:

Create an engaged team that reflects the full diversity of the communities we serve*

Inclusion

Recruit 3,500 apprentices & provide career development
opportunities for under-represented groups (2,000 apprentices by the end of 2025)

Apprentices

Inspire colleagues to give 100,000 days to build inclusive communities (35,000 days by the end of 2025)

Communities

*All company and senior leaders to be 48% women, 18% ethnically diverse, 20% disability, 3% LGBTQ+ and 4% ex-service by 2030 (40% women, 16% ethnically diverse, 10% disability, 3% LGBTQ+ and 3% ex-service by the end of 2025). Goal aligned to the most recent 2021 Census data for working populations.

Our 2023 achievements

Delivering on our goals

Top 50

Ranked in The Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality

>200

People recruited via our Ex-Forces Pathway programme

7,200

Volunteering days delivered

>800

Good causes supported locally

1. Inclusion

Create an engaged team that reflects the full diversity of the communities we serve by 2030

To build a more sustainable future, we need the best team – a diverse mix of people and skills, where everyone feels welcome and able to succeed.

That’s why we want all company and senior leaders to reflect 48% women, 18% ethnically diverse, 20% disability, 3% LGBTQ+ and 4% ex-service by 2030 (in line with 2021 Census data for working populations). Since we launched these goals in 2021, we’ve made strong progress as better recruitment and retention practices provided an initial boost of up to 4%. Further progress, however, requires systemic change across our business and society which may take time. In particular, diversifying senior levels and growing disability representation are areas to work on. Attracting more women into engineering is also challenging given our large Field engineering team reflects the existing male-dominated market, which impacts our overall Group performance.

In 2024, we’ll continue to embed our Positive Action Plans to attract, promote and retain more diverse talent.

2. Apprentices

Recruit 3,500 apprentices and provide career development opportunities for under-represented groups by 2030

We’ve a huge opportunity to tap into the talent of under-represented groups to energise a greener and fairer future.

So we’re hiring the equivalent of an apprentice every day over the next decade while removing roadblocks for under-represented groups. Since 2021, we’ve hired around 1,200 apprentices and helped over 750 trainees professionally qualify in areas like gas and whitegoods. As part of this, our Ex-Forces Pathway programme hired 230 people against our ambition to recruit 500 veterans, reservists, spouses and partners, and has been rolled into 2024-25. Meanwhile, we made steady progress against our ambition for 50% of our Smart Energy Apprentices to be women having achieved 14%, which is much higher than the gas engineer average of 0.2%.

As we slowed recruitment to focus on operational stability in 2023, we're slightly behind on our goal but are strengthening recruitment and marketing campaigns to get back on track.

3. Communities

Inspire colleagues to give 100,000 days to build inclusive communities by 2030

We’re harnessing the passion of our people to build more inclusive communities because strong communities are central to a more sustainable future.

We’ve ramped up volunteering, delivering over 7,200 days which is more than double the days we delivered in 2022. This brings our total tally to nearly 20,400 days since 2019 and was partly achieved by fully embedding team targets and expanding volunteering opportunities via ‘The Big Difference’, which is inspiring colleagues to get involved in local causes they care passionately about.

To stay on track, we’ll continue to expand volunteering opportunities including via our Get Set for Positive Energy schools partnership with Team GB and ParalympicsGB. This will help us achieve the annual step-up required which will see us move from 1 in 4 colleagues volunteering, to 1 in 3 by 2030.