Case Study - Growing our Pipeline
As the analysis in this report shows, attracting more women into and through our STEM career paths is key to improving gender parity and tackling our gender pay gap.
One component of our strategy to achieve this is through outreach, which generates interest in STEM and the nuclear industry from an early age and increases the chances of NNL and the nuclear industry having a bigger recruitment resource pool to choose from in the future.
Therefore, NNL’s focus on STEM at an early age and in an inclusive way should open up our talent pipeline for the future. We actively support diversity campaigns, including working with Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), Women’s Engineering Society (WES), Tomorrow’s Engineers, POWERful Women and Pretty Curious among others. We are also working towards implementation of the Women in Nuclear (WiN) industry charter.
If young people who engage with our outreach activities are not attracted to STEM, we want to ensure they have still interacted with the nuclear industry in a positive and memorable light, influencing a favourable public perception of nuclear applications.
For the period covered in this report:
- We offer interactive work experience placements
- We have taken an active role in residential courses, with university and charity partners, which help to give a flavour of both academia and industry for the students
- We’ve replicated real-life challenges and tasked students with resolving problems or designing things such as nuclear reactors or centrifuges, using specially designed model equipment
- We’ve built specific training into our apprentice and graduate programmes, and we actively encourage our people to get involved in numerous STEM initiatives which we coordinate centrally each year as we want our people to be passionate about supporting these activities and sharing their expertise in STEM - the next step is to get mid-career involvement
- NNL is also active in other arenas involving young children, such as Scout and Guide movements
- Working with schools and colleges - historically we have focused on secondary schools and beyond but increasingly we are engaging at primary level to spark an early interest in STEM subjects (we have at least three apprentices who heard about NNL whilst they were at primary school so the longevity of our work in this area is paying off)
We also make use of the social value element of our work packages to champion diversity funded by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and delivered by NNL, an example includes the pilot Advanced Nuclear Skills and Innovation Campus (ANSIC). This served as a research and innovation hub making use of the unique skills and capabilities of our Preston Laboratory to inspire the next generation of nuclear scientists. The scheme’s purpose was to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear technology but that potential is only possible with a pipeline of nuclear skills. ANSIC trialled employability workshops; online learning resources (developed with Developing Experts) and championed the ‘Science and Technology Leadership Programme’ at the University of Liverpool.
The six employability workshops run with, and advertised through, the Preston Job Centre Plus were a successful proof of concept. The feedback from these engaging sessions was extremely positive and led participants to apply to work for NNL and elsewhere. Feedback about the success of this programme includes this observation from one of the attendees: “I had never seriously considered working in this industry until you provided me with a clear understanding into what is possible and removed the fog of unknowns that surround nuclear energy”.
Social mobility is a key element of ED&I and NNL intend to build on this experience.
NNL’s Developing Experts collaboration facilitated the creation of film content for almost 60 lessons for a variety of ages. It also supports technical developments to the Developing Experts platform that will link energy related careers, training, and job vacancies with curriculum units as aids for teachers and career advisors.
The rationale being that, if young people have no awareness of nuclear roles, they are unlikely to aspire to join our industry. This campaign (which will continue beyond the FY 2021/22) will ultimately reach 6620 schools, 281,173 pupils, 26,937 teachers and 10,314 tutors. The data to date shows that interaction from young women has reflected societal demographics and a large geographical range in engaged schools.
Outreach is a key area of focus for NNL and the experiences outlined above will be used to further develop our Outreach Strategy.