Who are Sellafield Ltd?
Seventy-five years ago, we helped to create the nation’s nuclear deterrent.
Today, we’re using our unrivalled knowledge of nuclear to create a clean and safe environment for future generations. At every step in between, our people have decoded the mysteries of the nuclear atom. Those who went before us were the first to harness its powers to generate electricity on a commercial scale. They closed the country’s fuel cycle by recycling used fuel and went on to reprocess more than anyone else in the world. And they solved the problem of how to safely look after every type of nuclear waste. In doing so, they made a significant contribution to national low carbon power generation.
Now we’re taking waste out of buildings that are as old as the site itself, dealing with the legacy of our nuclear past. We’re looking after fuel so that nuclear power stations can continue to operate, and we’re repackaging the country’s stockpile of nuclear materials.
Once our value was measured in kilowatt hours of electricity produced, or the commercial price of reprocessed fuel. Now it is measured in our ability to place nuclear waste into containers that are safe for the long-term, to remove intolerable risks to our environment and to nurture the diverse skills our nuclear community needs.
What projects / schemes / initiatives to support women’s recruitment, retention and progression in STEM are Sellafield involved in?
Our gender balance mission is to embed a positive change in gender balance at all levels and in all capabilities across the organisation in line with meeting the Nuclear Sector Deal 40% target by 2030. We have a gender balance group and improvement plan which identifies where we need to improve and where we need to remove barriers and blockers which stop us from having the gender balance that we want.
Our key successes so far include:
- A real focus within our recruitment teams on improving where and how we advertise roles.
- A focus on ensuring support for interviews and candidates allows the broadest range of candidates
- Training and upskilling interview panel members
- Reverse mentoring with our executive and senior managers
- Analysing leavers data to identify trends and issues for female leavers
- A step change in agile working, flexible working in a post covid environment
- Set up a Gender Balance Section on our inclusion and diversity hub where people can go for more information on our activities
- Developed 22 case studies of people across the business who are doing things differently such as taking shared parental leave, working part time or more flexibly to support family life and providing case studies of women at all points in their career.
- Nuclear Decommissioning Authority unconscious bias/inclusion training has been rolled out to small groups
Why did Sellafield join WISE?
We joined WISE in order to benchmark against other organisations, learn from others, share our experiences and be the best we can be in driving true gender balance and long lasting change in our business.
