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1. Communicate commitment to operations and the management
equality and inclusion principles and and supervision thereof, despite
practices there being people with the right
2. Take action to increase diversity experience, skills and knowledge
amongst those in professional
engineering membership and Positive experiences:
registration OVO/SSE really promote LGBT
3. Monitor and measure progress employees with support and openness
In line with these objectives, There is a tangible effort towards
IGEM has been working hard on its recognising the diverse world we live
commitment to increase diversity in and this can only be a good thing.
within the membership and ensure all I feel proud of my company policies
members receive this support. and the positive way employees have
In 2019, IGEM updated its governance enacted them
manual, which included a dedicated
policy on diversity and inclusion, IGEM has been working hard
appointed its first Equality, Diversity
and Inclusion (EDI) Trustee onto the on increasing its commitment
Council board and appointed an IGEM to increase diversity within its
Diversity and Inclusion Officer to the membership and ensure all
secretariat. Since then, IGEM has been members receive this support
pushing its commitment to the above
objectives, ensuring practical marketing
and institutional changes are made to Question:
promote a more diverse membership. Do you have any ideas or suggestions
At the start of 2021, IGEM completed on what IGEM could do to help drive
its first EDI membership survey. The diversity, equality and inclusion within
purpose of the study was to inform the industry?
our own decision making as well as Negative suggestions:
provide data to the Royal Academy Not relevant from my point of view
of Engineering’s research, which Stop wasting our subscription on this
is designed to explore progression politically correct nonsense
against EDI issues within the No, I am fed up with so much time
engineering profession. and space being devoted to such
By completing this survey, we were matters in journals
able to gain new membership data in
these areas: Positive suggestions:
Ethnic origin Share survey results to all members
Disability Engage with school/universities and
Sexual orientation encourage placement in industry
Religion and beliefs Create a stronger link with the
On completion of the survey, we Women’s Engineering Society
were able to combine the comments Cast the right shadow at IGEM. Share
submitted by the members from two best practice that others can adopt.
of the open questions. By seeing these Keep diversity, equality and inclusion
answers and how some of our members high on the agenda
view EDI, we realised that there is a lot I would think that one area where
more work to be done. diversity is clearly deficient is in the
highest reaches of corporate entities
IGEM Membership, Diversity Question: and in the highest roles concerned
Would you like to share with us any
with hands-on engineering. This
& Inclusion Officer Liam positive or negative experience you diversity gap is most marked in the
Chamberlain reports on have had whilst working in the energy/ scarcity of females. If there is to be any
the work the institution is engineering industry in the past 12 focus on the part of IGEM it should be
months that you believe to be a direct link
on improving the gender balance
doing to contribute to a more with your answers above? Following on from the EDI
inclusive engineering sector Negative experiences: membership survey, we were able to
Still a lot of homophobia, racism and participate in the updated 2021 Diversity
n 2013, IGEM became a signatory sexism in the gas industry and Inclusion Progression Framework
on the Engineering Diversity Clear signs of age and race Benchmarking Report, originally
Concordat with the Royal Academy discrimination within the industry developed in collaboration between the
of Engineering along with, now, Too much time is being taken about Royal Academy of Engineering and the
I 31 other professional engineering this, which adds cost, time and takes Science Council in 2016.
institutions (PEIs). There are three people’s minds off their jobs Here at IGEM, we have received a
objectives shared with all signatories, Hardly any females and ethnic personalised report looking at our self-
these are: minorities represented in front line assessment and the figures we were

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