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The Topic: Skills UTILITY WEEK | 1ST - 7TH APRIL 2016 | 9 T here has been a growing focus on the gender composition of utility companies' staff over recent years, and this has not solely been for equality reasons. A recent study by MSCI highlighted that com- panies with strong female leadership (a board that has three or more women or where the percentage of women on the board is the country average) generated a return on equity of 10.1 per cent a year, compared with 7.4 per cent a year for those without. Despite this, the study states that if business trends continue on their current trajectory, women are unlikely to make up 30 per cent of directorships in publicly-held companies until 2027. The top 100 UK-headquartered energy companies only have 5 per cent of their roles filled by women, and this is all despite the fact that 57 per cent of undergradu- ates in this country are female. There is a disconnect between potential female utility employees and those crossing over into the sector. However, action is being taken to help address this. In the energy sector, the POWERful Women initiative is being backed by Ofgem, the Oil and Gas Authority and the Office for Nuclear Regulation, and aims to have 40 per cent of energy middle management roles and 30 per cent of board membership positions filled by women by 2030. In a joint blog for Utility Week, the groups stated: "Continuing to think differently means making sure our industry has the best talent to pick from. Getting the most from our people is vital in helping us face the chal- lenges ahead." EDF Energy is one of the more active companies in addressing this issue, launching and running its Pretty Curious initiative, which aims to encourage young girls to study science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects. The energy company has said it hopes that the programme will help to address the predicted annual 55,000 shortfall in people with engineering skills. It adds that it does not have all the answers, but that it is "a step in the right direction to tackle the serious issues of female underrepresentation in science, tech- nology, engineering and maths". Progress may be slow, but with ini- tiatives such as Pretty Curious, the utilities industry is moving in the right direction. Mathew Beech, asso- ciate insights editor Viewpoint: The gender gap in the utilities sector is stark, but efforts are being taken to redress the balance in science, maths and, more lately, computing. It is a subject that makes them think creatively about solving problems, introduces them to subjects like materials sci- ence and embedded intelligence, fosters teamwork skills and, crucially, teaches them about the iterative process of design and how to learn from failure. In short, the modern D&T curriculum is directly relevant to creating the skills and capabilities utilities will need for a future, transformed, energy system. And yet it is not a subject that utility employers generally talk about as being important in conversations with young people, teachers, parents or government. This needs to change if a worrying decline in the teaching of D&T in schools across the UK is to be halted. For the past two years, recruitment of D&T teachers has been 50 per cent below target and at the same time many seasoned teachers are retiring. Schools under budgetary pressures are also slashing D&T teaching time and budgets because it is resource-intensive to teach D&T well and because it is not being promoted as a priority subject at primary level or in the new English Baccalaureate system. This trend could lead to many thousands of children missing out on the opportunity to discover their talents for designing real-world solutions to real-world prob- lems, and could seriously exacerbate the already urgent skills pipeline problems utilities face. Employers can play a crucial and influential role in aligning skills and education policy and the drivers that schools behave against simply by thinking care- fully about the language they use in conversation with education stakeholders. I would therefore urge chief executives – many of whom take a passionate inter- est in industry skills challenges – and HR and training managers, to start including references to the relevance of D&T consistently and clearly in their communications with government and schools about the subjects which are most important to creating the skills and capabilities they will need in the future. Jane Gray, trustee, Design and Technology Associa- tion and assistant editor of Utility Week SKILLS AND APPRENTICESHIPS In the decade to 2022, engineer- ing companies will need 182,000 recruits a year with engineering skills, meaning the number of apprentices and graduates entering the industry will need to double (Engineering UK 2015) Between 2012 and 2022, engineering enterprises will need 56,000 engi- neering recruits a year (Engineering UK 2015) More than four in ten 11-14-year-olds say an engineering career is desirable (Engineering UK 2015) Nine out of ten schoolchildren surveyed (Adecco Group Jan 2015) were unaware that an apprenticeship could lead to a career in STEM industries. EQUAL PAY DAY 9 NOVEMBER 2015 This is effectively the day women started working for free for the rest of the year, because of the gender pay gap. 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Projected global percentage of women on boards 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 PROJECTIONS FOR REACHING 30% WOMEN ON BOARDS Source: MSCI ESG 2022 2027 2020 Accelerated turnover Business as usual 15.3% Jan May Sep Mar Jul Feb Jun Oct Apr Aug Nov Dec UNPAID Accelerated conversion PAID