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 Census data). Since launching this goal in 2021, we’ve made steady gains of up to 6%. Better recruitment and retention practices provided an initial boost, and we’re now focused on growing a more inclusive culture. This requires systemic change across our business, sector and society, which takes time. In particular, attracting more women into engineering is a big opportunity given our engineering team reflects the existing male-dominated market, and impacts our overall gender split that would otherwise be on track. Diversifying senior levels and growing disability representation are also focus areas.

We’ll continue to embed our Every Colleague Counts Action Plan to attract, promote and retain diverse talent.

So we’re hiring the equivalent of an apprentice every day this decade. Since 2021, we’ve welcomed around 2,000 apprentices to our team including over 400 in the last year alone. As part of this, we’ve progressed our ambition for 50% of our engineering apprentices to be women, reaching 15% so far. This is much higher than the national gas engineer average of 0.3% women. We’re also providing career development opportunities for wider under-represented groups including via dedicated pathways for ex-forces and athletes.  

Having slowed recruitment to focus on operational stability during the energy crisis alongside wider business changes and phasing, we're slightly behind on our goal. However, our forward-facing plans show we’ll get back on track.