“Women!” exclaimed the man at the local baths to me – about his wife.
“It’s an irregular plural,” I replied, stealing part of a line from the late great Bolton poet-comedian Hovis Presley – and swimming as far away from him as I could, as quickly as possible.
Little did he know, I was fresh from reading UKWIR’s new report about diversity in the water sector and in no mood for sexist comments. Little did I know, he was a retired water utility technician, as his lovely wife – a fan of Make Water Famous – was at pains to tell me later.
Jurassic sexism aside, the lack of diversity in today’s UK sector is laid out in UKWIR’s report and palpable to anyone within a breath of the sector. Across the water companies taking part, there is a 28/72 split on gender – though stretching into the supply chain, this likely worsens.
Having been in this industry for 20 years, I am in some ways inured to the absurdity of a vast gender split, but the statistics on Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) inclusion are in a similar state. Representation across the UK is 18.3%, while in the water companies involved in the report, BAME representation stands at around eight percent.
This no doubt crystalises at the intersection of being a Black or Minority Ethnic woman in water, or living with disabilities, but sufficient data was not available.
While delivering the structural change required to ensure representation across all minority groups is a mammoth task, and the industry is still at the foothills, the report points out one area ripe with opportunity. Communications is a less visible thread that runs through the document, yet this is the low hanging fruit in terms of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
The idea is pretty basic – by presenting as a company that values EDI, an organisation will start to attract a more diverse audience and recruits. High on the UKWIR report’s list is EDI represented on websites and in marketing material – which the report says is a measure that should be implemented immediately, especially in relation to having a dynamic careers and recruitment section on company portals.
Given the seriousness of the skills and recruitment crisis the sector faces, this seemed eminently sensible, so I decided to investigate. Surely water companies have their houses in order, and are already representing their communities in their imagery, if not yet in their workforces.
This is an area my own team takes very seriously in our media and PR work. We are always pushing for more diverse imagery for our clients and sometimes rejecting photos that show a lack of diversity – not an easy task.
I was in for a shock. Of the 11 water company careers pages I scanned, only three could be said to be representing a diverse workforce in the lead imagery. Three had no people at all, only landscapes – at the head of the careers page.
Of the others, while women tended to be represented, three showed no people who were obviously BAME, while the ratio in another large group shot was at least 1:50 – a long step from the 9:50 nationally. None of the images showed people with visible disabilities.
A picture is worth a thousand words, goes the adage, so if water companies – and other organisations in the sector – are measuring visits to their websites and applications for their jobs, it might be worth considering the ones they are lacking due to missed opportunities on communications. As the UKWIR report explains, it is proven that companies with leadership teams that actively champion diversity and inclusion experience enhanced decision-making and greater innovation, which is evidenced in their financial performance.
This is an exciting sector offering a multiplicity of interesting, purposeful jobs, some of which – especially in digital – are completely new. Diversity of thought and experience will move the sector towards the extraordinary transformation required if societal and environmental expectations are to be met in coming decades.
Hopefully the overt sexism of the past is already in the bin, but consciousness and action around EDI, in all areas – and starting with communications – could reveal a rich stream of previously untapped talent.
