Creating a culture where every individual is valued
Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult prides itself on providing an inclusive workplace for all employees to feel safe and supported at work, no matter what their individual characteristics.
As a relative newcomer to Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult – I am delighted and encouraged by the positive culture the organisation is creating around a number of areas in relation to inclusion and diversity. I have worked at a few other places and I have yet to come across an organisation who really is living its values and social obligations more than Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult… I have been heartened by various initiatives I have seen so far since joining virtually in May and continue to be impressed by the organisation.
Increasing the understanding and importance of diversity and inclusion
In striving for excellence in everything they do, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult encourages a work environment that is collaborative and where integrity is valued.
Through a number of established activities, the Catapult is positively and pro-actively increasing the understanding and importance of diversity and inclusion (DI) among its staff and making it an important part of the work culture.
For example, the Catapult recently completed the Inclusive Employers (IE) Foundation Assessment, which requires an organisation to provide evidence of how it is performing on its equality, diversity and inclusion journey. Based on the submission, the Catapult received a report framed around 6 ‘pillars’. These pillars are ‘engage’, ‘equip’, ‘empower’, ‘embed’, ‘evaluate’ and ‘evolve’ and they were provided with an assessment of the organisation’s relative strength against each of these.
The Catapult scored highest on engage and empower, next on equip and embed, with the greatest room to grow on evaluate and evolve. The Catapult is working on developing their first D&I strategy based on the feedback.
The Catapult also plays an active role in the Offshore Wind Industry Council’s gender, ethnicity and apprenticeship subgroups and has committed to seeking to increase the representation of women in its workforce to a third by 2030. The Catapult currently has over 30 Catapult STEM Ambassadors among 222 employees with a coordinated delivery strategy in partnership with local schools, organisations, and charities. The Catapult’s Operational Performance Engineering Manager, Tony Fong has been shortlisted for Young BAME Leader of the Year in the AFBE Awards 2021. A strong advocate of supporting students industrial placements and internships Tony also promotes external STEM engagement with schools, to encourage children to become excited by Engineering at an early age. A highlight of this activity was leading a team from a Fife Primary, to win a national competition to extract energy from waves, in a lab based experiment. The wave device was so successful it could continuously illuminate a rack of LED lights.
Other activity highlights include:
- Establishing an internal D&I group that meet monthly. With a passionate group of diversity and inclusion champions, membership of the group is open to everyone and continues to grow.
- Developing effective working partnerships with external specialist D&I organisations including IE, the Association for Black and Ethnic Minority Engineers (AFBE), Stonewall, Skills Development Scotland and ‘Who Cares?’1
- Recognising the D&I calendar, the Catapult raises awareness on different inclusivity topics through various approaches including lunch and learn workshops, all employee presentations, employee biographies and personal statements, and all employee written communications. These topics have included recognising and celebrating Black History, Diwali, Guru Nanak Jayanti, World Mental Health Day, Movember and National/Scottish Apprenticeship Week.
- Developing a section on the Catapult Intranet dedicated to communicating with employees on DI topics.
As well as benefiting employees, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult strives to create the conditions for the diversity of thought and innovation that empowers individuals to embody these values beyond the workplace.
- Who Cares? Scotland’s membership is a care experienced community creating belonging and achieving change in Scotland and the world, as part of a movement of Care Experienced People.
What has helped the most is my amazing mentor, Heather McLarty. She has given her advice throughout the year and helped me with work-life balance…It is great having this support to make university life less stressful and to help get the most of this time. Thanks to ORE Catapult, I am gaining more confidence and skills to actually do the things I want to do”.