During the past few years of heightening political and racial unrest, the country saw many corporations take various steps to be part of the solution instead of silent bystanders. For some companies, that meant unconscious bias trainings or reading assignments. For others, it meant taking a hard look at its company makeup and investing in resources to make it more representative of the country’s population.
Minnesota-based Blattner (No. 2 on the 2022 Top Solar Contractors List) was one such company that has been consciously celebrating and promoting diversity.
The company brought in Shannon Lueck as inclusion and diversity program manager. This job title is often under the “JEDI” heading, as it supports justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
“We are taking active steps to champion inclusion at Blattner,” Lueck said. “It’s about the culture we create, and one way we create an inclusive culture is by attracting and developing great, diverse talent.”
For Lueck, inclusion starts with an assessment of the company’s current employee makeup. Although Blattner didn’t share precise numbers, Lueck stated the corporate is exceeding nationwide labor statistics for ladies in development. In line with 2021 information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, girls make up 11% of all individuals working in development. Blattner says its discipline groups are over 50% numerous.
“We’ve been sharing with leaders the place we’re with demographics and girls in management and girls within the discipline. Who’re these people, how will we determine them, how will we develop them?” she stated.
As soon as there’s a baseline, Lueck will assist Blattner develop objectives for recruiting and growing numerous expertise in any respect ranges.
“Ladies in photo voltaic vitality management, discipline and company roles usually provide a novel perspective on their strategy to fixing enterprise challenges. The extra we will broaden our understanding of various viewpoints and embrace numerous lenses of variety, the higher our enterprise outcomes are,” Lueck stated. “At Blattner, we’re devoted to advancing girls in all roles inside our firm.”
One option to rent and retain numerous employees is by forming devoted useful resource teams to foster group. Blattner just lately created a Ladies’s Useful resource Group after seeing success from its veteran’s useful resource group known as HEROES. The HEROES group helped Blattner create a particular reference to its veteran workforce of over 170 individuals.
Lueck stated she sees potential for extra useful resource teams for marginalized populations on the firm. She believes these tactile and enduring efforts are far more transformative to the tradition than a one-off, reactionary gender or racial distinction coaching.
“My private recommendation is it doesn’t begin with unconscious bias coaching. It begins with actually systematic change. The place are we recruiting, how are we partaking, how are we connecting via worker useful resource teams?” she stated.
Together with healthcare and different advantages that appeal to girls and different underrepresented communities are additionally essential for diversifying new expertise. Blattner was acquired by Quanta Companies in 2021, so the corporate is re-examining its advantages with inclusion and variety high of thoughts. Each the veterans’ and girls’s worker useful resource teams have enter on the method.
“We’ve began discussions round the place these advantages might go. It’s a precedence for the group,” Lueck stated.
Typically, “inclusion and variety” develop into buzzwords that corporations use after they examine a coaching off the record or launch a press release after a tragic occasion. Committing to alter from the highest down takes time, effort and funding. New job positions devoted to those points might assist photo voltaic development corporations like Blattner persist with the plan for the long-term.
This story was featured solely in our 2022 Prime Photo voltaic Contractors problem. See the problem and full record of high U.S. photo voltaic installers right here.
