Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/1055150
14 | DECEMBER 2018 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk • DIVERSITY IN WATER: STATISTICS • Recent EU Skills research found that 80 per cent of the 60,000 people employed by UK water supply organisations are male. This compares to 78 per cent for energy and utilities, and 53 per cent for all sectors • The research also found that the industry has seen a small decline in ethnic minority representation, falling to 4 per cent from 5 per cent last year, with the figure for all sectors standing at 15 per cent • Only 8 per cent of workers in the water supply sector are under 24, compared to 12 per cent for all sectors, and 22 per cent are over 55, compared to 19 per cent for all sectors • It also falls behind all sectors on employees who identify as having a disability, with 12 per cent in the water supply sector against 15 per cent across all sectors • EngineeringUK's Gender Disparity in Engineering report, published in July, found that 12 per cent of those working in engineering are female, believed to be the lowest in Europe • STEM Learning research this year found that 89 per cent of STEM businesses struggle to recruit, with a shortfall of 173,000 skilled workers costing £1.5 billion a year The Works: Diversity and Skills • THE PROBLEM I n some respects, the water industry's record on female representation is encouraging. Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent, NI Water and Affinity Water currently have female CEOs. This summer, Pipeline, which concentrates on the number of women in executive roles, said Thames Water has made a "huge leap forward" on female representation, with women making up a third of its executive committee. Earlier in the year, the Office for National Statistics revealed that the grouping of water supply, sewerage, waste management and remedia- tion activities had a smaller gender pay gap (5.5 per cent mean and 6.9 per cent median) than any other sector. Even so, this may be obscuring the true picture. Lila Thompson, who becomes British Water's first female chief executive on 3 December, says: "At the moment, the issue seems to be that there are significant num- bers of women working across the industry but they might not be in middle or senior management roles, or they might be in dif- ferent roles not strictly related to water – HR functions, legal departments and so on. On the engineering side, the proportion is not as high." Even taking gender out of the equation, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) recruitment is a subject of concern throughout Britain – STEM Learn- ing recently found that 89 per cent of STEM businesses had found it difficult to recruit staff with the required skills in the previous year. When gender is factored in, the situation looks even worse. EngineeringUK's research showed that – despite girls performing better at STEM subjects at school – only 12 per cent of the workforce is female across the British engineering industry. According to the Energy & Utilities Alliance (EUA), this represents the worst record in Europe; by comparison, Latvia, Cyprus and Bulgaria's engineering workforces are around 30 per cent female, Sweden's 26 per cent and Italy's 20 per cent. Greater diversity could result in signifi- cant benefits. By widening the net and em- ploying more people from beyond the usual demographics, the water sector could not only go a long way towards addressing its skills shortages but potentially open itself up to different approaches, with research supporting the notion that greater diversity yields a greater range of ideas. In its 'Delivering Through Diversity' report at the start of this year, for exam- ple, global management consulting firm McKinsey found that companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic/ cultural diversity were 29 per cent less likely to achieve above-average profitability than all other companies in its data set. Future Water Association CEO Paul Horton says: "If you take John Lewis as an example, they're very involved in the local community, and I think if you looked at their employees they will reflect the local community in terms of background, skills, knowledge, gender and ethnicity. "I've yet to see that approach within the broader water sector. Diversity doesn't just reflect a community, it reflects the way a business evolves and grows, and leads to lots of different ideas that keep it moving forward." • ENGAGING YOUTH P erhaps the single most important factor in finding a solution to the skills gap is the need to appeal to youth. The Future Water Association is seeing promising signs on that front with Young Water Dragons, a competition for people aged between 11 and 16 interested in STEM subjects; it was named People Initiative of the Year at the 2018 Water Industry Awards. The competition sees young participants encouraged to apply their minds to water challenges with the help of mentors from companies in the water industry. In 2016, a team of girls from Guildford won the first ever Young Water Dragons prize a«er developing an optical-based 'switch' to divert the first flush of water harvested from roofs to settlement tanks before sending cleaner secondary flows for toilet flushing. Last year, a team from Teesside Girls School won with a project based on eliminating algae growth in reservoirs and recycling the algae as fuel. "We were almost surprised when a team of boys won this year," Horton says. "I don't know the dynamics of it. It's a positive reflection of things at a certain age at schools. It's hard to say whether it's because there aren't the same prejudices or nuances or barriers at a young age and therefore there's more diversity in people getting involved in project work, but I don't see the level of gender bias in the school teams that enter that I've known only too well in the sector as a whole." The FWA's Paul Horton, right, with the 2017 Young Water Dragons award winners from Teesside Girls School