Diversity as Strategy: The Case for DEI in Water Operations

The water sector is approaching a workforce problem it has known about for years. Roughly 23% of the industry’s people are within five years of retirement, taking decades of operational knowledge with them. At the same time, the sector recruits from a narrower pool than almost any other essential service. In Episode 97 of the Exec Exchange, Joanne Kay, General Manager for Wastewater Operations at Scottish Water, argues that these are not two separate issues. The talent the industry needs already exists. The barrier is that operations were never designed with that talent in mind.

A career built in operations

Joanne studied environmental sciences and biology, driven by an interest in environmental protection. Her first role was as a water sampler at East of Scotland Water, one of Scottish Water’s predecessor organizations. Through successive restructures she became a process scientist, a role she held for 13 years and where she discovered a lasting interest in wastewater. From there she moved into climate change strategy planning before returning to operations, first as a regional manager and then as general manager, a step she took on during COVID.

Scottish Water remains a public authority, serving around 6 million people across Scotland with both water and wastewater services. Its footprint covers dense urban centers, remote rural communities and every Scottish island. Transient populations add real operational pressure. Joanne points to the North Coast 500 route, Highland tourism and cruise ship arrivals that can change local loading overnight.

Where the gender gap actually sits

Across Scottish Water, women make up around 30% of the workforce. In wastewater operations, the figure is closer to 10%. Joanne believes that is broadly reflective of the industry.

Part of the explanation is the sector’s dependence on STEM roles, which have historically attracted fewer women. But Joanne is clear that this is not the whole picture, and that the remaining factors are within employers’ control.

Shift patterns as a structural barrier

Operational work in water has traditionally meant fixed shifts, unsociable hours and on-call rotas. In Scotland, around 80% of caring responsibilities, for children and for elderly parents, are carried by women. Globally the figure sits near 60%. A working model built without reference to that reality will systematically exclude a large share of the available workforce.

Joanne’s proposition is straightforward. Redesign shift patterns and operational flexibility around how people actually live, and a substantial pool of capable candidates becomes reachable.

The problem of invisible role models

Early in her leadership career, Joanne was accepted onto a future leaders program. By the launch event she was four months pregnant. Having seen almost no women with children in senior positions at the time, she bought a dress specifically to conceal the pregnancy.

At the event, two other women on the program were visibly pregnant and openly congratulated. The organization’s actual culture was nothing like the one she had anticipated. Her expectation had been formed entirely by the absence of visible examples.

Between acceptance and the launch event, Joanne had a miscarriage. She returned to work over Christmas and carried on as normal, telling only one close colleague. Almost no one in that room knew what she was dealing with.

She draws two lessons from it. People calibrate what is possible for them from what they can see. And inclusion matters precisely because colleagues are usually carrying things nobody else knows about. DEI, in her definition, is the work of helping people see themselves in a role, belong in it, and succeed in it while the rest of their life continues.

Losing experience at the peak of a career

Piers raised menopause directly, describing watching his wife struggle to be taken as seriously as male peers of the same age. Joanne agreed, noting the timing: symptoms including brain fog, night sweats and anxiety often arrive at the point of greatest professional experience.

She highlighted the research gap that followed the HRT and breast cancer scares, which paused both treatment access and investigation for years. Getting appropriate treatment still requires patients to push for hormone testing and tailored care, a demand that is itself difficult to meet while perimenopausal. Her summary was blunt. She might occasionally lose a word. She did not become less capable.

For employers, this is a retention question. Adapting working environments keeps 20 to 30 years of accumulated expertise in the business rather than letting it leave early.

Generational expectations and handing on the baton

Joanne also points to well documented shifts in what younger employees expect from work, including research from firms such as Deloitte. Millennials and Gen Z look for genuine flexibility and alignment with personal purpose. Utilities are legacy organizations with long asset lives and long institutional memory, and they depend on each generation passing knowledge to the next.

As Joanne puts it, she holds her role only for a moment before handing it on. If the next generation is not there, or the organization has failed to recognize what they expect, that handover does not happen.

A strategy, not a statement

The argument Joanne makes is a commercial and operational one. A sector facing a knowledge cliff edge cannot afford to recruit from a fraction of the population, and it cannot afford to lose experienced people at the point where they are most valuable. Widening the pool and modernizing how operational work is structured is one of the few available levers on workforce sustainability. Better representation of the communities utilities serve follows from the same work.