Diversity and inclusion within National Grid and the legal team has been a priority over the last 12 years. We have an aim to mirror the populations we serve. National Grid does a lot of work in communities; we are involved with work on power lines and digging up streets – we are out there and people expect to see a diverse workforce.
Internally, there is a desire to have a diverse workforce. We are believers in all forms of diversity, because a diverse team leads to diversity of thought. People from all different backgrounds approach things differently. National Grid has been around for a long time, it’s a very traditional organisation, so it’s great to get people in who are not afraid to say: ‘have you thought about doing something differently?’ You don’t get that unless it’s a diverse workplace.
The top leaders understand the diversity and inclusion benefits, while the people coming in, the younger generation who have grown up in a diverse culture, for them it’s the norm. But there’s still a thick layer of middle management who have to be convinced that it is both necessary and beneficial. It will take time and you have to force people to look at the problem differently. For me, it is about explaining the business benefits. Things have improved immeasurably, but there is still some way to go.
We have just been through an external panel review and we had a focus on diversity and inclusion in that tender. We made it clear that we expected to see diversity in gender and ethnicity. The tender process gave exposure of our legal suppliers to other areas of the business, and through that exposure, we can show the rest of National Grid that you can be tough with suppliers and with what you want them to bring to the table. You can push quite hard and you can do that through the whole supply chain – although it is easier in some areas than others.
The challenge for National Grid legal is not the diversity aspect, because we are already pretty diverse, although we could increase the mix within the UK legal team to include more LGBT and ethnic minorities. We do, however, need to concentrate on the inclusion aspect; if we don’t use the people we have brought in effectively, our diversity drive will have failed.
Within National Grid, we have been bringing in people with learning disabilities as part of an initiative called EmployAbility. We have partnered with local schools and taken young people who would have possibly gone into unemployment when finishing school, and instead have given them the opportunity to intern with us. We have kept the vast majority on full-time and are looking at how we can use these interns most effectively. We can and should bring them into our legal team and I’m convinced they would add richness and diversity to our work. The transformation of these people is absolutely outstanding; they come to us very shy, very nervous, unable to make eye contact; and they ‘graduate’ with a vastly improved skillset and a growing confidence.
Most generally across National Grid, the challenge is still inclusion. It can be tough creating an environment where people can flourish and be themselves. National Grid has found this as hard as anybody. We deal with dangerous substances, we are a traditional, rules-based company and if you are not careful, people get stifled. Our challenge is to give people the space to grow, be themselves and innovate, but keep people safe and not break our own rules.
One way we are measuring inclusion is through our employee survey, which breaks our huge organisation into small teams. It asks whether people feel they can be themselves, if they feel they are being heard and their differences are respected. Depending on the results, we can put plans in place to address shortcomings.
A big part of increasing diversity is making sure your pool is diverse to start with, so we spend a lot of time with schools and universities, trying to get the message out there that engineering is not just for boys. We work hard with schools to make sure that they are positive about the sector and it’s not just seen as dirty work.
Another mechanism we employ is requiring a certain number of females on the shortlist for jobs. We then have to look after them and promote them once they are here at National Grid. The challenge now is how to encourage women to move up the executive track – convincing women to go for those management positions, convincing them that they are capable and they can fit it around an acceptable work/life balance.
Getting that work/life balance right is evermore key. We will go backwards if we don’t address that and there’s a lot of work to do here. Looking at things like flexible working policies, men with kids, dads doing the school run – this is now essential and we need to make this the norm. Diversity and inclusion could go backwards if we’re not offering the same opportunities to men, as they will vote with their feet.