Working for equality and diversity across nuclear

Cathy Collins, an operational inspector for the Office for Nuclear Regulation, talks to Prospect’s Boc Ly about her Branch’s efforts to make their workplace, and indeed the entire nuclear sector, a more equal, diverse and inclusive space for everyone.

As a woman working in the largely male-dominated world of nuclear engineering, Cathy Collins says that she has spent a lot of time over the years working out how she could just be herself rather than dealing with, or ignoring, the fact she was often the odd one out.

Eventually, she realised that she could actually do something about it and in the process, not just help herself but many of her colleagues too.

“I found my own path through it over the years but by being a general union rep, I realised that many of the personal cases we deal with are quite often because people can’t bring their whole self to work.

“Unconsciously, perhaps, the organisation wasn’t doing the best for some of its people, whose lives outside work might be different from the majority.

“In the past, people have helped me in difficult times, so what could I do now to help everybody else? Someone helped me, now I’m passing it along.”

Diversity and Inclusion Group

Cathy Collins

At the heart of Cathy’s efforts of creating a healthier workplace environment for everyone at ONR is the Diversity and Inclusion Group, where unions and management work closely with each other to settle upon pragmatic actions.

“We used to be a group that was just about policies and procedures but over the last couple years, it’s very much about moving on to actions and deeds,” says Cathy.

ONR is a disability confident employer and already did, for example, lots of STEM outreach work but a breakthrough for its progress on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion was the realisation that those issues “were not just something for the HR department, the small number of women inspectors, or the small number of ethnic minority staff.”

“We were not reaching out to the silent majority,” says Cathy.

So, rather than launching a women’s network, there was a recent ‘gender equality conversation’ where the inaugural meeting attracted almost as many men as women.

“Several of the men said, ‘I want to know what I can do to be an ally, how can I help, how can I challenge behaviour?’ It’s not always the person on the receiving end of the behaviour who has to do the challenging.”

Cathy says those are the sort of conversations that she, and her colleagues on the D&I Group at ONR are trying to get started.

New organisational values

Similarly, when the Black Lives Matter movement rose up in the United States and across the world last summer after the tragic murder of George Floyd, the official ONR account tweeted its support.

“It started the conversation with that silent majority, who were like, ‘what’s that got to do with us?’ We’re only the nuclear safety regulator after all,” remembers Cathy.

“Actually, ONR introduced some organisational values, which are being open-minded, fair, accountable and supportive. You have to stand up for those things. Prospect have been actively supporting and working with management about rolling out the values.”

As part of the performance management system at ONR, staff will be expected to demonstrate how they’re living up to the values.

Cathy admits that they’ve been lucky at ONR because the outgoing chief executive, Adriènne Kelbie, is also the president of Women in Nuclear, and has been a role model for women across the organisation.

Her successor, the current chief nuclear inspector Mark Foy, has already pledged that the new senior management team will attend the diversity group meetings and continue those discussions with the unions.

“Almost all the inspectors are Prospect members,” remarks Cathy.

“So, we’ve got this opportunity of trying to influence senior management not only through the formal mechanisms of the diversity group but in one-to-one discussions.”

Across Nuclear

An equally important aspect of ONR’s good progress on equality and diversity is their role as the nuclear regulator.

For Cathy, it’s important that they set an example for the whole sector because, as well as being the right to do, EDI is an important part of fostering a good safety culture.

“The way we treat each other, being able to speak up and having a just and fair culture; it’s not just about EDI. For our day job, it’s the right thing too.

“If you look at the indicators of a good safety culture, it’s a place where people feel enabled, at whatever grade and or wherever they are in the organisation, to say that something isn’t right and there might be a problem.”

“Sue Ferns, Prospect’s senior deputy general secretary, has been talking with one of the deputy chief inspectors about what we can do, not just within ONR, but across nuclear. We have our role across nuclear and Prospect reaches across the energy sector.”

Ongoing work

While much progress has been made, there is still plenty for ONR’s Diversity and Inclusion Group and the network of equality reps to continue to focus on.

“We’re looking at the relationship between stress, bullying and harassment, and equality and diversity. We’ve worked with the organisation at refreshing all of those policies and getting them implemented,” says Cathy.

There are also conversations to be started on gender bias and gender equality and making sure that the move towards greater blended working, or remote working, is accessible for everyone and is not unfairly discriminatory.

“There’s still quite a lot of things we’re working on. It’s all very pragmatic, focussing on local solutions for local issues. These are things that will appeal to members in their day jobs too, so they’ll feel the benefits from it.”