As a relatively new industry, renewable energy has faced obstacles in developing itself as a thriving business sector.
One of these has been tackling a skills deficit for green jobs as, having never existed in the way they do now, many roles in the new sector require training.
In December 2023, RenewableUK entered into a partnership with Energy and Utility Skills to create training and assessment standards for the UK’s renewable energy workforce in order to combat this issue.
More recently, Daikin UK partnered with the Green Skill Academy and Quantum Group to train green heating tutors at nine Greater Manchester colleges.
It is clear that the industry is working to bridge this skills gap, with each association taking a slightly different approach from the next. As a traditionally male-dominated industry, several approaches aim to inspire women to enter and remain within the renewable energy sector, many of which will be highlighted today as part of International Women’s Day today.
Rachel Hayes, associate director of the ReWiRE mentoring programme at Regen, sat down and spoke exclusively with Current± about her approach to providing support to those fostering a career in clean energy.
The skills gap, as it stands
From Hayes’ perspective, the problems regarding a skills deficit are not as insurmountable as other industry members may suggest.
She instead suggests focusing on the transferrable skills which are widely available and highlights the fact that, as interest in combating climate change grows, so does the interest in working within this sector.
Hayes says: “It is a case of drawing in those wider skills, as well as people with transferrable skills, and training them up with a detailed energy policy, in order to build out the technical side of the renewable supply chain.
“In the last five years, people have been more interested in working in sectors where they are making a difference.”
Hayes sees this obstacle as a challenge well met more than anything else, saying that she believes “there are a lot of jobs out there” and people are willing to take them.
When and where the problem lies
Despite having a positive outlook overall, Hayes does note a consistent, problematic pattern at a certain point in green careers.
She says: “It’s really about taking women from middle management through to senior management and senior management through to the board level. And that was very much a bit of the industry that was not supported.
“We are seeing quite a high level of women dropping out at that level, mostly once they had had children and, having had children, I understand the challenges of juggling a full-time role.”
Hayes attributes this omission in the system to a lack of support from within the industry and wider societal pressures as well as expectations.
Hayes says flexibility is key to keeping women in the clean energy sector at this level, adding that organisations “which offer flexibility for both men and women, not just for children but for all sorts of caring responsibilities” are able to not only keep their workers but also attract people from other sectors with transferable skills.
The flip side of this is that the industry does provide what Hayes calls “fantastic support” for women in an entry-level role or straight out of university, as evidenced by the growing number of new applicants.
“We have a graduate recruitment program, and we are regularly getting between 80 and 120 applications per role,” she says. “The level of people that are coming through that junior level is astonishing.”
She adds: “I’m heartened by the number of women engineers – I am seeing more and more. I think the more we encourage people to be more visible, the more female engineers we attract into the sector”.
Power in mentoring
Mentoring is designed to allow mentees to learn from someone they “admire professionally” says Hayes, exploring how they excelled in their field whilst receiving coaching on how to raise their own external profile.
The mentoring programme Rachel Hayes is responsible for – Regen’s Women in Renewable Energy Network (ReWiRE) – specifically focuses on middle managers in the clean energy sector looking to move up to senior management positions, the stage which sees the most attrition, as pointed out earlier by Hayes.
The programme was set up in 2015 and, according to Hayes, has “successfully matched approximately 50 to 100 women with a mentor annually for the last eight years”.
Hayes also refers to the “two-way relationship” of mentoring, as the practice provides insight for mentors as well as mentees as they can gain “new skills, experiences and ideas from the fresh faces in the sector”.
Seeing the next step
From her experience, Hayes has identified representation as a crucial aspect of seeing female workers grow from middle management to senior and board member roles.
“We are constantly seeing feedback from people, saying that they want to see at least two steps ahead of them,” she says. “It is no longer attractive to go to an organisation that does not represent where you want to be in five years’ time.”
Hayes mentioned National Grid as a “fantastic example of a big organisation that has made fundamental changes to its recruitment policies”.
National Grid ESO recently underwent an organisational redesign as part of its transition to National Energy System Operator (NESO), part of which has been appointing its first-ever chief operating officer (COO), Kayte O’Neill.
In terms of advice for organisations who want to make changes to be more representative, Hayes had this to say: “Change the makeup of your board.”
“If your board isn’t 50/50, you are not going to get women into those middle and senior management positions because they cannot see a route to progress.”
