Stacey Gristock | Cardiff, UK

I joined Bute Energy on 31st May 2023, a company that had only been around for a few years and was going through a period of significant growth. I was tasked with chairing the DE&I group. I was extremely excited to take on such a privileged role. My intention for the group was exactly ‘group’. I wanted it to be a collaboration, a place where individuals could come together to make a difference. Our first meeting involved us reviewing, digesting and tweaking our group charter and terms of reference that had been passed down to us from People Committee. It was really important everyone in the group signed up to this and really believed in what we were trying to achieve. From here we collectively built an action plane based around 3 main themes – Well informed, Belonging and Move the dial. Since then we have meet every month and achieved a tremendous amount. We have:
– Hosted a Trans inclusion and trans awareness session with Hays Recruitment.
– Launched our monthly DE&I calendar and shared exciting, informative information each month around a number of topics and celebrations
– Become a member of Inclusive Companies
– Completed an accessibility audit and identified a gap which we immediately resolved by ordering and arranging evac chair training for all of our Fire Marshalls across the two sites.
– Contributed to all new People Policies launched since the establishment of the group to ensure there is a DE&I lens and any barriers are removed.
– Joined the roundtable working group with Inclusive Companies to help shape the upcoming C-Suite ‘DE&I must Live’ session due to be held in the House of Commons around September time.
– Sponsored Pride Cymru for the second year running with more colleagues and family and friends joining to celebrate such an important and privileged day.
– About to launch another policy that will further support our ethos of belonging and that is our gender diversity policy which aims to educate and support colleagues, managers and specifically the individual to bring their whole selves to work.
– Recently conducted a stop, start, continue exercise as we approach our first year mark to establish how we want to evolve the group and it’s focus in 2025.
– Currently working on launching a Women in leadership programme