Five tips from Insite Energy to help you embrace
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
written by Eelinn Vanquathem, Marketing and Content Manager at Insite Energy, in collaboration with Elizabeth Shough (Libby), HR Manager at Insite Energy. Insite Energy are kindly sponsoring Connecting Women in District Heat 2023, which takes place in Manchester on Tuesday 6 June.
Eelinn writes:
Insite Energy are a national metering & billing, and maintenance provider for heat networks. Working together with over 80 heat network operators, we manage more than 30,000 residential meter points. While we only have 64 employees, we are the highest-ranking provider on Trustpilot in our industry, and our diverse workforce has had a big impact on this.
Making equality, diversity & inclusion (EDI) part of your day-to-day operations in your organisation has many benefits.
The most obvious one is the impact it has on employees. Having an organisational culture that ensures fair treatment and opportunity for all and that celebrates diversity and inclusivity brings people together. This makes employees feel more comfortable to be their authentic selves, thereby building stronger workplaces allowing people to feel supported and relaxed at work and, as a result, reach their full potential and perform better.
At Insite Energy, we have a diverse workforce, and this diversity is mirrored in the residents we serve. Many of these residents may share their experience with our customer services team. Having a workforce with diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences, helps the people working in our contact centre to better understand residents and be more empathetic towards them. From a business development perspective, tenders and proposals increasingly request how you, as a supplier, embrace and apply EDI within your organisation too, reflecting the increased importance of an EDI strategy.
If you are part of an SME, it may, however, be overwhelming to start considering EDI, especially when looking at larger corporations who may have a dedicated team that specialise in EDI. It’s important to realise that as a small business, these resources may not be available to you, and that’s okay.
Insite Energy’s HR Manager, Libby Shough, has had a first-hand experience of implementing an EDI strategy in an SME. She shares her five tips to implement EDI when you may not have a ton of resources.
Set up an annual employee engagement survey with a focus on EDI
Looking at larger corporations, EDI strategies can be complex. These can require a lot of resource which SMEs don’t have.
By sending out a regular employee engagement survey, with questions that focus on EDI, to employees to complete anonymously, you can hear directly from employees to understand how different groups of employees experience your culture, providing them with the opportunity to directly share their views and opinions. This enables you to truly understand how your employees feel and gather valuable data that directs you on where to focus your time and efforts on changes that truly matter to your workforce.
Last year was the first time we at Insite Energy launched our employee engagement survey, and we implemented a lot of changes on the back of it. The survey did not only result in a new family friendly policy, giving more flexibility around parental leave, but also helped to highlight areas within EDI that we wanted to focus on during 2023.
Education & training for line managers
Sharing knowledge and expertise does not have to be difficult. Simply sharing an article you have read online, finding free webinars to attend, or discovering groups that provide a catch-up with likeminded people, such as the District Heating Divas, provides a good base for your line managers to better support their employees.
Just before Ramadan, for example, I shared an email with all line managers outlining what Ramadan is, when it is, how some employee may be observing Ramadan, including information on fasting and additional prayer time. I explained how this could impact employees at work and provided tips on how employees can feel well supported during Ramadan through implementing temporary adjustments to working arrangements and practices. We ensured that both of our offices had private rooms available throughout the working days for prayer, contemplation, and meditation. I followed this up with a company-wide email to all employees to mark the beginning of Ramadan to ensure that our employees that were observing Ramadan felt supported. All of this did not go unnoticed with employees communicating their appreciation for this.
Create an EDI policy and publish it
Your EDI policy does not need to be complicated. It simply needs to set out a statement of commitments. This may include steps you are currently taking or are looking to implement to ensure fair treatment and opportunity for all, to eliminate prejudice and discrimination and to continuously embrace and promote equality, diversity and inclusion in all that you do
As a starting point, here are some of our commitments that may inspire your EDI policy:
We recognise that employees and customers bring their own unique capabilities, experiences, and characteristics to our workplace. We are committed to creating a community where inclusiveness is encouraged and valued, and which reflects the diversity we encounter in our customers.
Every employee is entitled to a working environment that promotes dignity and respect to all. No form of intimidation, bullying or harassment will be tolerated.
To create an environment in which individual differences and the contributions of all our staff are recognised and valued.
Training, development, and progression opportunities are available to all staff and awarded based on merit.
Once you have written your EDI policy, you need to ensure that it is shared with all employees, and I’d recommend publishing it on your website too. This will not only demonstrate your commitment to EDI to employees, candidates, clients, and residents, but it also helps to keep you accountable, ensuring you dedicate resource and time into implementing your EDI strategy.
Ensure fairness in processes, training & development, and promotions
In the point above, you may have noticed that one of our commitments is to provide training, development, and progression opportunities to all. This is central to any EDI strategy and should be implemented from the hiring process and throughout the employee’s employment, with professional development, training and career advancement opportunities available to all.
At Insite Energy, we ensure that all roles are advertised on a variety of job boards. This does not only maximises the reach of our job adverts, but also acknowledges that individuals may seek new job opportunities from different recruitment platforms.
We also ensure a fair process is in place for internal promotions and new job opportunities with all vacancies being advertised internally across the company. In 2022, 20% of our employees moved roles internally or were promoted. On top of this, women make up 50% of managers at Insite Energy. Considering that in the energy-related sectors only 14% of senior managers are women, we are proud to have enabled these opportunities for them.
Build an events calendar
Building an events calendar may take a bit of time, but once you have one in place it does not require a large amount of resources. Plus, you can have a lot of fun with it.
For example, this year for Eid, we are organising a big lunch for people to bring in a dish, whether homemade or store-bought, and share it with their colleagues. It’s an event that does not require a lot of organising or financial resource, yet brings people together.
As a company we also aim to raise more awareness around mental health. This can often be a difficult topic to approach, but by having created an events calendar, we are aware of upcoming days and weeks, such as Mental Health Awareness Week, that help us to introduce the topic to our employees, and then build on that.
EDI is constantly evolving and will also take on different meanings for your employees over time. It’s important to remember that as an SME, even small steps towards embracing EDI is better than no steps at all.
To attend this year’s Connecting Women in District Heat 2023, sign up here.