Supporting our colleagues
Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
At Severn Trent, diversity is a huge part of who we are as a business, how we operate and how we continue to deliver against our bold ambitions.
We positively celebrate diversity and inclusion and embrace every individuals’ contribution. We believe that we’ve all been shaped by different things – whether it’s our backgrounds, upbringings, life experiences or cultures – and it’s those things that make us brilliant at work.
Embracing those differences means we can deliver at our absolute best for our customers, communities and colleagues.
Our diversity and inclusion (‘D&I’) ambition – ‘Wonderfully You’ – launched in September 2021 and included gender and ethnicity D&I targets for the first time.
We’ve come a long way since then, but it’s not all about hitting targets – which is why we refreshed our approach last year. It is all about helping us to achieve our business goals and deliver brilliantly for our customers.
By employing, valuing and investing in a range of local talent, from all backgrounds and with different experiences and perspectives, we can build a skilled workforce who really understand and empathise with the communities we serve.
Our three pillars
In support of our 2025-2030 business plan, our three areas of focus are:
Provide a great customer service
By building a workforce that understands and empathises with our local communities.
Address skills shortages
The shortages in our communities often coincide with areas lacking in diversity. By broadening our talent pools, we can address both of those challenges at the same time. Especially in areas like engineering or HGV driving.
Support our societal strategy
By helping people from all walks of life into the workplace, especially those who might be facing barriers to work or employment due to things like long-term unemployment or leaving the care system.
Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
When we look at the next five years for our business, we know that valuing diversity and ensuring our people are included and able to do their best work will help us to lean into some of the trickier challenges. We continue to engage in a series of outreach and employability initiatives for under-represented groups within our communities, to break down perceived barriers which may prevent people from considering a career with us.
There is no quick fix, so we need a sustained and consistent approach over a long period of time. Critical to our success are the launch of our Societal Strategy and continuation of our outreach activities, internships and new talent programmes. These will help in attracting diverse candidates from under-represented groups, removing barriers to entry and creating a level playing field, whilst still recruiting the best person for the job.
Our achievements
New Talent Programme
Providing a variety of entry routes into our organisation is an important part of our employability strategy.
For example, our New Talent Programmes provide an opportunity and structure for individuals at the start of their career or those who wish to change career to gain skills for life that will lead them into a highly skilled, well-paid career.
This year, we have created a diverse range of programmes, including 90 apprenticeships and 46 graduate roles. This is reflected in the range of individuals that apply for our programmes, including under-18s, a broader range of mature apprentices, and internal colleagues who wish to pursue a different career.
We recognise the importance of reflecting the communities we serve, and we are really encouraged to see that 39% of our new talent has joined us from social mobility cold spots this year.
Our Academy
Investing in skills and knowledge
We are committed to investing in the right skills to better serve our people, our customers, our communities and our environment.
The Academy is responsible for enterprise-wide learning and development and has overall accountability for employee training and learning experience.
Our vision is to develop the most skilled workforce in our industry through investment in learning and our purpose-built Academy which opened its doors in 2021. We have a continued focus on skills across all our learning streams and specifically building skills resilience across our operational teams.
This is demonstrated by the large number of training events we deliver each year, with over 4,000 training events conducted annually.