Looking back at W4RES Webinar n°8: Diversity recruitment strategies in the renewable energy sector

As we speak of individual struggles, there is a bottleneck of development as there is need of more workforce, more skills, upscaling of the skills, a diverse talent pool, and inclusivity and especially in the case of the renewable sector. With an aspiration to go beyond the efforts of the previous webinars, WECF (Women Engage for a Common Future) organised its last webinar in the scope of the W4RES capacity-building program to mainstream gender in the RHC sector. The webinar aimed to give insight into solutions that can improve the bottleneck market space in the case of diversity recruitment processes in the renewable energy sector. 

WECF opened the talk by diving into the need to upgrade recruitment strategies and make them inclusive and just. The first speaker, Ms Elisa Bußkamp, is a Hamburg psychologist working as a Talent Manager at Femtec GmbH. As a student career counsellor, Elisa showed some practices influencing the students and their perspectives on the job market, as well as Femtec GmbH programs and activities to connect young female in STEM with companies and networks, thus participating to a gender-just renewable energy sector.

The second speaker, Dr Julia Brugger, Head of Strategy Implementation at Salzburg AG, shared her experience as a STEM student and how her technical field company decided to take heads on gear and make themselves a diversified workforce. Dr Julia shared hands-on strategies they have already implemented and a few that will be implemented soon.

The third speaker Ms Ashmita Krishna Sharma, founder of Sparkling Gems, aimed to help organisations to build an inclusive workplace. Ashmita brought participants a starting point for a more inclusive and sustainable work floor: “Diversity is not just a buzzword, but a key driver of innovation and success in the RES sector, and that we can all take concrete steps to make our workplaces more inclusive and welcoming to all”.  You can find 9 strategies shared by Ashmita to build a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Later, the participants went into two breakout rooms where they co-created their vision boards, envisioning an ethical and inclusive workplace (refer the figure 1 and 2). 

The webinar concluded by giving our audience food for thought and a vision of a futuristic diverse, and inclusive workplace. 

We are looking forward to a very interesting and successful webinar series. We want to thank everyone for participating.

Watch the recording of webinar n°8 here.

To have more information on our webinars program, you can follow this link: https://w4res.eu/w4res-new-webinar-series/

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We are pleased to announce the publication of the last issue of the W4RES project. The newsletter is available here.

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You want to improve gender equality in the renewable energy sector? You’re missing arguments or guidelines on how to implement it? Check out our W4RES tool!

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Ihsane Haouach is a social entrepreneur, author, trainer, and speaker, dedicated to promoting equal and sustainable transitions. Alongside international projects targeting an efficient and effective organisation, she founded several non-profit initiatives aimed at promoting equity. As a consultant and trainer, she intervenes to improve organisations’ societal impact. Her experience and skills from both the corporate […]

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Bipasha Baruah is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Women’s Issues at Western University.