Our Colleagues

We have a series of policies to promote best practice. These are reviewed annually and where necessary are approved by the Board. All of our policies can be found here.

An extensive review and refresh of the Group’s Code of Conduct and associated policies was approved by the Board in March 2021.

We have a comprehensive programme of training and engagement which runs throughout the year. The programme has been designed with the Group’s key compliance and principal risks in mind to increase resilience, heighten awareness and embed our culture of doing the right thing. The training consists of a number of online modules relating to our key policies and procedures including: The Pennon Code of Conduct, Regulatory and Compliance, Whistleblowing Speak Up, Gifts and Hospitality, Anti-Corruption and Bribery, Anti-Facilitation of Tax Evasion, Anti-Modern Slavery & Human Rights and Conflicts of Interest.

Diversity and inclusion

Our sustainability strategy and people strategy encompass our vision to increase diversity in our workforce and to build a culture of inclusiveness across Pennon Group. We monitor and report the Board’s approach to diversity and diversity data and information in our Annual Report and Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap Report. The Pennon Sustainability Committee review the business’s diversity and inclusion performance annually. The Pennon Board, and Adele Barker, our Group Chief People Officer are responsible for diversity initiatives within the business. The Board diversity policy can be viewed here.

Pennon Group is a leader in promoting gender diversity at the highest levels, being one of the few UK businesses with both a female CEO and Chair. The Group's Board composition exceeds diversity targets, with women outnumbering men at 63% female representation as of March 2024. Pennon ranked 3rd for best performers in Women on Boards in the FTSE 250 and 10th in the FTSE Women Leaders Review, surpassing the 40% target. Building a diverse and engaged workforce is central to Pennon's success. The Group's exceptional gender diversity at the Board level and industry recognition demonstrate its commitment to fostering an inclusive workplace culture and promoting equal opportunities. We are also the first water company to become a signatory of the Change the Race Ratio, helping society to advance ethnic diversity at all levels, and from all backgrounds.

Download our Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap Report:

https://www.pennon-group.co.uk/about-us/gender-and-ethnicity-pay-gap-report

Read Our Change the Race Ratio Commitments here.

Targeted recruitment

Pennon Group is actively promoting diversity and inclusion in its recruitment efforts. The Group has recruited a diverse cohort of graduates since 2021, with our 2023/24 REACH recruitment figure exceeding our target for attracting diverse talent to apply for roles. Pennon continues enhancing its careers website and creative recruitment campaigns while forging new partnerships to drive its diversity and inclusion agenda. The Group celebrated milestones like signing the Armed Forces Covenant and becoming a Disability Confident Employer.

Pennon regularly evaluates its approach, using tools to mitigate bias in job advertisements and ensuring brand imagery represents the communities it serves. Targeted recruitment schemes align with local population data to attract a diverse workforce. The Group is seeing a significant increase in applications from ethnically diverse candidates and women, traditionally underrepresented in the industry.

Overall, Pennon Group is implementing various initiatives to foster a more diverse, inclusive, and representative workforce through its recruitment practices.

Our targeted recruitment schemes also aim to attract a diverse workforce and are aligned to local and regional population data from government statistics. We monitor diversity in all applications and new hires, as well as ensuring that our job advertising uses gender neutral wording, so we don’t discourage female talent from applying. This information is submitted to the Board and Executive Committee on a quarterly basis.

Training and guidance

Diversity and Inclusion training is offered to all our employees. This is an interactive workshop giving participants a better understanding of what equality and diversity means and why it is so important for the business and for individual employees. Furthermore, an insight into unconscious bias will soon be available for all Board members.

Accessibility Audit

In 2022, we carried out access audits across our head office in partnership with EMBED who have supported us on our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion journey. Ensuring our sites are inclusive is important as they represent the collective services and practices which customers, colleagues and potential talent identify and engage with. We are now working with EMBED following the outcome of the audit to create an action plan to further improve our locations and facilities. We have recently installed a multi-faith prayer room in our Peninsula House office.

Initiatives

Below are examples of some of our diversity initiatives that go beyond legal compliance and support a diverse workforce;

• Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group – The aim of this group is to lead and drive our approach to Diversity and Inclusion and ultimately support the growth of a more diverse business through delivery of our targets across Pennon Group. The group meets quarterly and focuses on our diversity and inclusion strategy, priorities, targets, networking and developing external relationships with Diversity and Inclusion partners and professional bodies.
• Launched our new employee networks – Employee networks play a key role in encouraging and supporting employees in bringing the best version of themselves to work, contributing to an inclusive environment and building a sense of community. The nine employee network groups support: Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage, LGBTQ+, Women, Menopause, Grief, Financial Wellbeing, New Parents, Carers and New Starters.
• Apprenticeship and Graduate Management Trainee programmes – Our industry is predominantly male and our focus on targeted recruitment of graduates and apprentices has led to a high female recruitment rate, which is higher than our business wide targets.
• Energy and Utilities Skills Partnership – Pennon is a member of this partnership which aims to ensure a safe, skilled, diverse and sustainable workforce in the sector.
• 10,000 black interns – Pennon Group is a proud supporter and sponsoring business of the 10,000 Black Interns initiative. Over the past two years, the Group has supported 10 internship placements, and plans to support at least 15 more in the coming year. Most students returned to complete their degrees after successful internships, with four interns already securing permanent positions in Pennon's graduate program. This important scheme provides Black students opportunities to understand the business while improving ethnic diversity levels across the industry.
• Social Mobility Partnership
• Mentorship programmes:
  • Female mentorship programme - Pennon offer female mentorship programmes for middle and senior managers aimed at helping to develop a broader pipeline of women and balance the gender diversity pyramid at all levels of the business. This contributes to the 30% club of which Pennon are members.
  • Graduate Management Trainee mentorship programme – All our graduate management trainees have been offered a mentor within the business.
  • All our graduate management trainees have been offered a mentor within the business.

At the heart of any great business are the people who work in it. Our people strategy is centred around talented people doing great things for customers and each other.

We want to be the best place to work for our employees and we value the expertise, dedication, adaptability, flexibility and commitment of everyone who works with us as one amazing team. We are delighted that Pennon has been recognised as Britain's Most Admired Utility Company by Management Today. This award demonstrates our commitment to engaging employees in our strategy and the important role they play in delivering it.

Pennon is pleased to welcome SES Water colleagues to the group which increases the group to 4,000 employees. We are focused on attracting, engaging and. developing our employees and supporting the right to collective bargaining including compliance with all local laws. Pennon is pleased to be a Living Wage Foundation employer and is committed to exceeding the government national minimum / living wage pay rates and paying employees appropriately for their high-quality work and service to customers. Pennon works to identify and reduce excessive working hours and undertakes resource planning to identify future resource needs and recruits and develops these resources appropriately to develop a high quality and resilient workforce.

All employees receive regular formal performance reviews linked with career development and to help identify training needs. All our employees receive regular training to ensure they undertake their duties in a safe manner and to the highest standards. Training is delivered via a variety of methods with much of it externally accredited to maintain quality standards. On average employees receive up to one hour of training each week with much of this delivered at their workplace or at our dedicated training centre.

Pennon Group is heavily investing in developing young talent through apprenticeships, graduate programs, and work placements. The Group has doubled its commitment in this area, setting targets to support 1,000 apprentices, 200 graduates, and offer 5,000 work placements for young people by 2030. Specifically, Pennon aims to offer 500 new apprenticeships and recruit 100 graduates by 2025, already exceeding apprenticeship targets.

The Group was an early supporter of the government's Kickstart scheme, providing work placements to underprivileged youth and hiring over half permanently. These structured youth development programs allow Pennon to attract and retain skilled employees, achieve diversity goals, and demonstrate its commitment to initiatives like The 5% Club. Ultimately, well-trained employees through these programs help deliver high service levels and operational excellence for customers. Pennon recognizes the importance of investing in the next generation of talent as a key part of its workforce strategy and commitment to local communities. The expanded targets and initiatives highlight the Group's prioritization of youth development and employment opportunities.

Well trained and motivated employees help us deliver the high level of service and operational performance our customers expect.

Read more information on our Employee metrics in our ESG Databook

The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees is paramount. At Pennon, we believe everyone who works for us and with us should go home safe to their families and loved ones every day, and this has never had more resonance than in the current climate. We worked hard to support employees physically and emotionally during the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and have continued to evolve how we can improve both the physical and emotional health of all of our people.

Our Pennon Code of Conduct ensures all employees have the same understanding of what is expected in the workplace. It is fully aligned to HomeSafe, our health and safety programme, to ensure employees get to work safely, enjoy a safe and healthy working environment and arrive home without incident at the end of the working day.

HomeSafe

Pennon Group's flagship HomeSafe program provides the framework for driving significant improvements in health and safety activities across the organization. HomeSafe is built on six strategic pillars: Managing Risk, Sharing and Learning, Working Together, Protecting Health, Enabling Leaders, and Being Resilient. This year, HomeSafe targeted three specific areas: Visible Safety Leadership, driving a Culture of Accountability, and Using Analytics for Targeted Interventions.

Initiatives included HomeSafe Live events with over 2,300 employees attending engaging sessions, leaders celebrating success and encouraging good practices, a '12 days of Christmas' campaign, focus on leading indicators and embedding behaviors, rapid response to incidents, and utilising analytics to target interventions in high-risk areas. Supporting elements involved building internal competence, elevating the Site Pride initiative, strengthening the health and safety team, achieving ISO45001 accreditation, and implementing a process safety framework.

Pennon Group achieved notable performance improvements, including reduced incidents, a 75% reduction in days lost due to injury, delivering an extra 450 productive days, and broadening HomeSafe's reach to the supply chain. South West Water achieved ISO45001 accreditation, and the Group recorded its best-ever health and safety performance with a 46% reduction in Lost Time Injuries.

Health and safety performance is monitored by the Pennon Executive, Board, and Executive Health and Safety Committees. The Health and Safety Committee provides a 'review and challenge' function to support the Board and Executive on health and safety matters. Looking ahead, the Group will evolve its HomeSafe strategy to align with new values and support employees while ensuring everyone goes home safe every day, with a roadmap to HomeSafe 2030.

LTIFR

The Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) for employees and agency staff continues to be the Group’s primary measure of health and safety performance. Following reductions year on year for the last three years for the Group, this year we delivered a 46% reduction in actual Lost Time Injury (LTI) numbers, with 15 LTI’s in the year compared to 28 last year, and an LTIFR of 0.30 compared to 0.59 last year. Read more on our Health and Safety metrics, including LTI, LTIFR, training and Wellbeing in our ESG Databook.

SES has had another excellent health and safety performance in the past year, with no Lost Time Accidents (LTAs), and no reportable incidents or injuries at year-end. Numbers of minor Non-Lost Time Accidents (NLTAs) were also lower than the previous year. We are proud of the efforts to achieve two RoSPA Gold Awards (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) – one for health and safety performance and the other for fleet safety and the management of occupational road risk.

Pennon has developed an anti-slavery programme to allow it to understand and mitigate the risk of modern slavery across the group. Please see our updated anti modern slavery and human rights policy. Pennon Group has a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery and is committed to eradicating it from its operations and supply chain. The Group has implemented policies like the Code of Conduct and Anti-Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy that all partners and suppliers must comply with. It publishes an annual Modern Slavery Statement outlining the activities conducted to prevent modern slavery and has a Suppliers Code of Conduct aligning the supply chain with the Group's standards.

Pennon Group has membership with the Slave-Free Alliance to develop tailored processes and controls to prevent modern slavery, providing external expertise. The Group is rolling out a three-year program to maintain the highest employment standards for direct employees and the supply chain.

Pennon Group relies on internal efforts and external partnerships to monitor, assess, and reduce the risk of forced labour and human trafficking across its business activities and relationships, demonstrating a clear commitment to upholding human rights and ethical employment practices. Our latest Modern Slavery Statement can be found here: www.pennon-group.co.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/pdf/pennon-modern-slavery-statement-2023.pdf.

Pennon has maintained its membership of the Slave-Free Alliance, which is part of Hope for Justice, the global anti-slavery charity. Our membership demonstrates our commitment to the highest employment standards for both our direct employees and those within our supply chain.