SSE - Gender Diversity Campaign

Shortlisted for the WISE Campaign Award 2015

12 November 2015

SSE - Gender Diversity Campaign

SSE is in the first year of their diversity and inclusion campaign and have set a number of stretching targets which are supported at Executive level. Gender balance has been placed at the heart of their recruitment and marketing campaigns this year. SSE have sponsored The Women’s FA Cup Final, advertised at high profile venues, used video blogs, and have talked in schools, at careers events, colleges and universities to showcase SSE’s female workforce.

They have run a number of Employability programmes which includes a partnership with Barnardo’s and a 10 week work experience programme which has provided routes into work for young people who would not otherwise have chosen an Engineering career. Entry level applications have risen 44% from last year, with 7.4% of offers being made to females, a marked increase from 1.77% in 2014. A particular success is the Graduate Engineering Programme, where offers to females have rocketed from under 1% in 2014 to 23.5% in 2015. Kerryanne Ashburn, HR Resourcing Manager at SSE, says: “Around 47 percent of the energy workforce is due to retire within the next ten years so it’s crucial that we can fill that skills gap. The challenge is to recruit more females into a historically male-dominated industry.”