Utilities business Centrica is intensifying its efforts on diversity to
help it open up new natural gas supplies in remote regions.
The group believes that recruiting a more diverse workforce and
improving employee sensitivity to cultural issues should help it
establish a bridgehead in countries where it has not previously
operated.
Judy Greevy, head of corporate responsibility and diversity, said there
was a strong business case for improving diversity across the group,
particularly in ‘upstream’ parts that source natural gas. Centrica will
spend £2.5billion ($4.6bn) over the next five years on securing gas
reserves. ‘When looking for gas in different parts of the world where
we need to negotiate sensitively and understand different cultures,
cultural awareness is important,’ she told EP. ‘Increasingly we’re
looking at where we’re going to source gas in the future, and that will
involve us being active in parts of the world we’ve not worked in
before. So we need to understand what it means to work in different
cultures.’
Centrica has created a diversity and inclusion ‘senior action group’
headed by board member Jake Ulrich to oversee progress over the next
three years. Every business in the group, which includes British Gas
and Centrica Energy, has been given a tailored diversity plan against
which it will be monitored. Greevy said the idea was to relate these to
the needs of the business. ‘We’re trying to make it so that the
diversity and inclusion agenda is linked into business imperatives, so
there will be a different emphasis in upstream areas, where it may help
with sourcing gas, than in other areas where the needs are different.’
Other companies are also looking at their CSR programmes with a view to
reducing risks associated with opening up new markets. Gas business BG
Group, which has 5200 employees in 20 countries, of whom 450 work away
from their home nation, will introduce guidance and training on human
rights partly to deal with difficulties that may arise when it is
moving into new areas.
BG recently agreed to buy natural gas from Equatorial Guinea and
Nigeria and is also exploring in Israel. As dwindling gas supplies in
the UK force it to look elsewhere, it says the need for better
performance on human rights has become more pressing, and that
increasingly ‘we can find ourselves working in areas with human rights
risks such as … repressive governments, conflict zones, weak rule of
law and poor labour standards’.
Carey Francis, head of corporate responsibility relationships at BG,
said: ‘Any hydrocarbon company considering investing in these countries
in the future needs to understand human rights risks and how to manage
them. That’s why we’re doing this work on human rights guidelines.’
BG is one of a number of companies working with an industry network,
the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation
Association (Ipieca), on human rights. BG intends to ‘roll out more
specific human rights guidance when oil and gas sector material is
available through Ipieca’.
