Transcript

JOHN STEWART

We've got a real business need for looking to encourage people to come back into STEM just now across the energy industry. By 2023, 47 per cent of the workforce can retire, and it really means we need to be really thoughtful about expanding and fishing in every single talent pool that we can get into. And we think there's a reasonably untapped talent pool here, and we need to work hard to be in it and to be seen as an attractive employer within it.

Organisations have started to realise that they're going to inadvertently miss out on the talent pool if they don't think a little bit more widely, and they're going to miss out in experience, and there's untapped markets. So I think things have changed, I think, certainly.

So my peer group talking in the energy sector, I think there's been an awful lot more focus on inclusion and diversity. And when you talk to people about why they're doing it, most of it isn't because it's a feel-good factor. Most of it's actually because there is a talent issue across the whole STEM sector, we haven't attracted enough people in the last few years.

And so if we've got people that want to come back that have actually proven themself before, there's an untapped resource. And I would probably argue that employers, I think, are probably starting to get their head round that. If they take a good graduate now, it's going to take a few years to get up to speed. If somebody has actually been up to speed, maybe a few years out, but they know what to do, we'll get them up to speed more quickly.

So I actually think there's quite a firm business case now for actually fishing in this talent pool. And all the numbers suggest that if we don't get more creative and innovative about filling our skills gap, we're going to have a challenge as an industry.