Thames Water: Driving diversity within engineering project manager recruitment

The Women’s Network within the Connecting Women in STEM (CWS) community at Thames Water is passionate about creating a place where all women within science, engineering, engineering project management, digital and other STEM areas can connect and work together in making a difference for women now and in the future.

CWS has four simple elements to help us focus on what we want to achieve:

Firstly, recruit more women into STEM roles and continue to close the gap in our target of having 45% by 2025. We will be attending networking events and recruitment fairs to attract talent and share best practices with other businesses on how they work in the female recruitment space. We’re also reviewing how we can be more effective at making recruitment more diverse within the business and ensuring we provide equity to all candidates.

For example, Thames Water has diverse panels that can be used when interviewing candidates. It also works with providers and businesses to support candidates who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and who come across additional barriers when looking for employment (such as care leavers and prison leavers).

In addition, as a business we recruit apprentices and interns, and support T-levels within STEM roles, including engineering and project management. We can provide internal and external people with these opportunities within Thames Water.

Secondly, continue to learn and grow to ensure women have access to equitable and sustainable careers.

Thirdly, connect internal and external STEM women to a community that helps to build skills and development.

And finally, engage with local schools and colleges as part of our outreach programme to raise awareness of roles and engage future talent. We have several engineering project managers who are passionate about visiting schools and colleges to increase awareness of this area of STEM. By being active role models for the future generation we can help young people gain insight into project manager roles and the water industry.

Why are we doing this?

Thames Water is committed to building a pipeline of skills from our communities and from the education sector to ensure we have a diverse and inclusive workforce that represents the customers we serve.

As we continue to turn around our business and improve our performance, we want to ensure our people receive the right investment in skills development to have successful and sustainable careers. We have a passionate team of people who volunteer outside of their day jobs to ensure we are doing everything we can to manage, recruit and have a company where everyone feels supported and are treated equally and fairly, whatever their gender, ethnicity or nationality.

Support from our passionate leadership community has also been vital in creating culture change and driving forward our aim to make Thames Water a place where people want to work. We also have several diversity and inclusion networks at Thames Water, which are an essential part of helping us to focus on what we can do better for our employees, communities and the environments we serve. We are doing this by all working together and ensuring our values are at the forefront, so everyone is treated as an equal as part of Team Thames.

If you’re working on your own STEM initiative and are curious to find out more about what we are doing at Thames Water, please get in touch with me at samantha.saunders@thameswater.co.uk