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

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 latest 2021 Census data for working populations.

Our 2024 achievements

Delivering on our goals

Top 50

Ranked in The Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality

339

Apprentices recruited

10,683

Volunteering days

~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 Census data for working populations). Since launching this goal in 2021, we’ve secured 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 we recognise may take time. In particular, diversifying senior levels and growing disability representation are areas to work on. Attracting more women into engineering is also a big opportunity given our large Field engineering team reflects the existing male-dominated market, which impacts our overall Group gender split.

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 this decade. Since 2021, we’ve welcomed over 1,500 apprentices to our team including 339 in the last year alone. As part of this, we’ve progressed our ambition for 50% of our engineering apprentices to be women, reaching 19% so far. This is much higher than the gas engineer average of 0.3%. Meanwhile, our Ex-Forces Pathway programme cumulatively onboarded 390 people against our rolling ambition to recruit 500 veterans, reservists, spouses and partners. And thanks to our partnership with Team GB and ParalympicsGB, we’ve now extended Pathway to include athletes.

Having slowed recruitment to focus on operational stability during the energy crisis in 2023, we're slightly behind on our goal. But we’re 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, donating around 10,700 days. This is nearly 40% more than the previous year and brings our total tally to over 31,600 days since 2019. Gains were achieved by making volunteering a key part of our culture, having embedded targets across teams and expanding volunteering opportunities via ‘The Big Difference’. This is our local community programme that inspires colleagues to get involved in 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 out to 2030.