Changing workplace culture within the chemicals industry

In this episode of #The Equity Edge, hosts Professor Sue Black OBE and Jo Stansfield are joined by guests: Kyra Sedransk Campbell, Associate Professor at the University of Sheffield, co founder of Nanomox and an EDI Champion, Mark McBride-Wright, Chartered Engineer and founder and CEO of Equal Engineers, Lisa Nicholas, Equity Diversity and Inclusion Manager who champions positive change in male dominated industries, and Paula Furtado Kohn, Lecturer at Sheffield, Hallam University.

This rich discussion encompasses cultural change for greater inclusivity in the workplace and helping leaders to become more authentic.   As they shed light on the startling statistics on masculinity within the construction, manufacturing and process industries, they share about the greater need for psychological safety, through engaging with the majority to highlight the needs of the marginalised and underrepresented.  The conversation includes the guests’ involvement within different networks within the Foundations industry and the greater need for industry inclusion.

Meet our guests

Episode Transcript

Episode Transcript

Sue Black

Welcome!  The Equity Edge is all about shaping tomorrow’s foundation industries, with a focus on EDI – that’s equity, diversity, and inclusion, and how it can help us achieve a sustainable and fairer future.

I’m Professor Sue Black. I’m Professor of computer science and technology evangelist at Durham University, leading pioneering initiatives like our award winning TechUPWomen programme championing diversity in STEM

Jo Stansfield

And I’m Jo Stansfield. I’m an engineer-turned-business-psychologist specialising in equity, diversity and inclusion in engineering fields. Welcome to The Equity Edge podcast.

Sue Black

Together we are working with TransFIRe, a programme investigating how the foundation industries can develop innovative solutions to reduce waste and energy use, and to accelerate the development of clean technologies.

Jo Stansfield

These are the industries that make 75% of the materials we see around us, and are fundamental to modern society – they are: cement, metals, ceramics, glass, paper and chemicals.

 

Sue Black 

Hi everybody. In this equity edge episode we’re talking about the chemicals industry and culture. We’ll explore the experience of working in these industries and hear from experts who are working to create inclusive workplace cultures. who’s joining us today, Joe.

Jo Stansfield 

Thanks,  Sue, today we’re joined by Kyra Sedransk Campbell, who’s an associate professor at the University of Sheffield, co founder of Nanomox and an EDI champion.  And we’re also joined by Mark McBride writes who’s a Chartered Engineer and founder and CEO of Equal Engineers spearheading rapid cultural change on diversity and inclusion in the engineering industries. Welcome to the show Mark.  And we welcome Lisa Nicholas an Equity Diversity and Inclusion manager who after 20 years working in manufacturing is championing positive change in male dominated industries. Welcome, Lisa.

Lisa Nicholas 

Thank you.

Jo Stansfield 

And finally, we have Paula Furtado Kohn, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. Her research focuses on circular economy in the energy sector. Paula’s experience spans continents having spent 10 years working in Brazil before moving to the UK. Welcome to the show, Paula.

Paula Furtado Kohn 

Hey, thank you

Sue Black 

Welcome, everybody. So Kyra, I think we’ll start with you. The chemical industry has produced some of the fundamental products that underpin modern life, but their work isn’t perhaps well understood by the public, can you tell us about the kinds of products that the chemical industries produce and tell us about your work with chemicals?

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

Absolutely. And thanks, again, for having me on your podcast. So what’s really interesting is that as a population, we come in contact with chemical products on a day to day basis. And in your supermarket, when you’re shopping, you’re buying chemical products. In some ways, you can think of it as the detergents that you use to clean your clothes and your dishes. But it’s actually quite a bit broader than that, because the chemical industry touches a lot of parts of our lives. A lot of the corporations and the formulations that they produce, actually touch things like things you might eat, things you might sort of use for a wide variety of personal care products, that sort of thing. So there are a huge number of things that every day in your life you’re using, that are coming out of the chemical industry. But what you sort of don’t see is you see the thing you buy, and we are becoming more aware of what ingredients are in those things. And I think there’s been a large push to make that more open and for people to be more aware of it. But there’s a whole industry behind it. And that means that we have all the things and all the steps that are required to get to the point where you have a consumer product. And so the chemical industry is what serving that. And that means we’re going everywhere from what are called small molecules. So those are really small components that we essentially use as building blocks a bit like if you want to imagine small plastic blocks your children might play with, and how they construct something larger out of it, it’s fit like that. And so you’re selling the larger product. But it’s a result of all those small products being put together that come in lots of different shapes and sizes. So the chemical industry relies on a huge diversity of knowledge. And so as a chemical engineer, I’m responsible for being part of that ecosystem. And as a, as an academic part of my responsibilities, also teaching students who are going to be a part of that process. And that might involve everything from, you know, working with those building blocks. But it also means running these huge plants that are used to produce these large consumer goods that we require. So it’s a really interesting space in terms of what’s going on and what’s hidden, if you will, behind all those things that you’re buying.

Sue Black 

Oh, that’s amazing, and really interesting. So I never thought about there being chemicals in food products. Can you give us some examples of what that might be?

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

Well, I don’t want to put you know, anyone’s specific, or any specific product under you know, and suggest that they exactly what they’re doing. But absolutely, because chemicals actually can be is sort of a really umbrella term. And in the lab, we would think of lots of plant based lots of normal things. As things that are consumable from a ingestion point of view. That doesn’t mean you can consume necessarily everything. And we know that right? We can’t consume lots of toxic products, but there are lots of chemicals that are essentially healthy, maybe plant based, that you might is something you might think of. But also when we start thinking about it, it’s actually a really interesting thing to start to recognize that plants are complex molecules. And all the components are complex molecules and their building blocks for things that we find in our products. So yeah, so even in foods you can find certainly additives that you would certainly put under the Chemical category. Pharmaceuticals certainly is another big dimension where you It certainly find lots of chemical industry sort of feeding into the pharmaceutical industry.

Sue Black 

Yeah. So actually, while you’re talking, I’m thinking so like bread and raising agents and stuff like that, or preservatives or like E numbers in. I can’t remember, there was a big thing about E numbers a few years ago, in our food

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

I’m gonna get in our political debate about it

Sue Black 

Oh, I didn’t even know it was political

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

however you want to describe it. But what else but actually, your example of raising agents is brilliant, because every kid does the volcano experiment, right? Where they do like the vinegar and the bicarb. And obviously, it’s the release of CO2, and you get the bubbles. And it’s brilliant. And actually, that’s a chemical reaction. First of all right? So great way to first introduce that concept to children, that you can take this liquid and this powder. But that’s something that has to be produced, that raising agent is not just something that you go scoop up somewhere, right? It has to be produced, it’s coming from the chemical industry that then packaging it and making something that can be used. So absolutely, that’s a great example.

Sue Black 

Yeah, no, that’s really great. And I never thought of those things as chemicals before, but of course they are. It’s just, I don’t know, how we think about them sort of in, in society is not as chemicals, but they definitely are chemicals. Thank you very much, Kyra.  So Mark, and Lisa, over to you. You’ve both worked in chemical manufacturing, and then gone on to change your professional focus to cultural change for greater inclusivity. What did your work involve? And how would you describe the your workplace culture? Maybe go to you first Mark,

Mark McBride-Wright 

thanks for that Sue. Really interesting listening to Kira, they’re talking about chemical engineering. I’m a chemical engineer as well by background and it got me thinking that maybe it’s quite limiting the term chemical because of the public perception of what chemicals are. And we thinking about toxic symbols, you know, and polluting the environment and all the nasties, when actually maybe process engineering is a better term, because chemical engineers are involved in anything that involves a process, taking those small building blocks to make something out of them, whether it be a product or be energy. And my interest was very much around energy. So I, I moved into industry after doing my PhD in carbon capture and storage and worked in technical safety engineering. So my interest is all around looking at creating safe workplace environments from a physical safety perspective. I’m also gay and 10 years ago, when I was employed, when I worked in industry, things were not so progressive in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, things were moving, but they weren’t moving fast enough for my interests. So rather than trying to set up a employee network at my employer at the time, I put my energies into setting up what went on to become the UK’s largest network for LGBTQ plus engineers called InterEngineering. And that’s how I earned what I call these days, my rainbow stripes for diversity and engineering, and essentially segwaying out of industry into working with industry in a start up. So I really enjoyed working in culture, work culture transformation, helping leaders show up, be more authentic, get more people engaged in who can be engineers, and what engineering is. But so I need to step up, broaden out and create an entity to apply equal focus into each strand off diversity. So I set up EqualEngineers in 2017, to focus on interventions that would help increase the rate of groups coming into the sector who are currently marginalized or underrepresented. And that involves running careers fairs, doing awards, doing conferences, so on and so forth. But 18 months into that journey, I discovered the suicide rate in the construction, manufacturing and process industries. It’s the highest of any sector in the United Kingdom, over 700 workers per year die by suicide in these industries. Now, being an engineer, being a safety engineer, any other incident rate that had that rate of you know, failure, or that likelihood of death would be engineered out designed out, money thrown out to try and eradicate the problem. So is that we were minimizing the likelihood to as low as reasonably practicable using some technical safety terminology there. So to me, I had this aha moment where well, the intention of this inclusion and belonging work is to try and create a place where you can be your whole self bring your whole self to work. Clearly, it’s not working for our large tranche of the workforce. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to be open about the root causes that are driving this high incident rate of suicide ideation, self harm. So I pivoted equal engineers a strategy but before they did that, we did some of our own research in masculinity in engineering, I didn’t believe the data from the Office of National Statistics. Since then, we’ve ran two surveys on masculinity and engineering. And in both surveys, we’ve seen a similar rate reported on those particular questions that had just mentioned, one in five engineers reported losing a work colleague to suicide, and one in five reported self harm, suicidal ideation, personally, and that number went up to one and four when we did the 2022 survey. So I saw a need to pivot and redesign our programs, our training interventions, to really shift from focus on minoritized groups to instead focus on a way that will help engage the majority, because my experience running InterEngineering to try and get more inclusion on LGBTQ plus, we tend towards a very shallow conversation, the conversation, the narrative becomes very divisive, very polarizing, very them and us, it’s focused on you know, for everyone to fly a pride flag and Pride Month and very small things like that. That male majority, the white cisgendered, heterosexual, able bodied neurotypical, male majority that represent 86% of the profession, just don’t feel part of it, they don’t feel included, ironically, in the inclusion and belonging strategies that we’ve been deploying thus far. But if we approach it from a different angle, and make them feel included, hence, proscribing safe leadership, which is this new notion that I’m writing about in my book that’s coming out in April, the Safe Leader, by coming out from an angle that is less threatening, less polarizing, makes them feel part of it, and the fact that they have a diversity story as well, they have something to share, then it’s a very different energy with which the conversation is then met when we start layering in the conversation around minoritized groups. And because that’s the male majority that are having this high, instantly suicidal ideation, self harm, men are not being vulnerable. Men are not being open, men are not challenging one another, you know, to be vulnerable. Leadership traits are very much through anger and power and dominance. That’s what we need to dismantle when we talk about the toxic masculinity. Sometimes that can be in the workplaces. So we’re getting a lot of success in that area, you know, leadership teams that have tried everything, feel like they’ve tried everything, you know, whether or not they’ve done it effectively. That’s another story. But this notion of safe leadership, is really helping leaders connect first, personally, like, what’s their identity? What’s their difference when they felt excluded in the past, and some white male straight engineers have to dig a little bit deeper, because they all those layers of privilege, but once they get to that experience, and then they’re able to relate that to the point that other groups feel like that, sometimes, we get them hooked from an empathetic perspective. And then we reduce the adversity that we can sometimes create, when we start the conversation on DEI from a minority position. So I need to be careful that I’m not saying that we’re avoiding conversations on misogyny, homophobia, systemic racism in the sector, we’re not, but we’re starting the conversation for a different starting point that leads to greater engagement and hence, commitment to action from others. Because ultimately, inclusion and belonging is about everyone. And I feel like for engineering and for the foundation industries for safety as part of our DNA, it is ingrained into everyone. And that is a construct from which we can get more uptake. And we can start extending physical safety into this idea of psychological safety and feel your and removing barriers. You know, it’s all part of our engineering language, we just need to retool the conversation.

Sue Black 

Wow, there was some really horrific stats there, Mark met some really amazing work that you’re doing and looking at it from a different perspective. That’s so interesting. So yeah, I’m looking forward to reading your book when it comes out. Thank you.  So moving over to you, Lisa, what’s your experience,

Lisa Nicholas 

I suppose I come at this from a very personal perspective, I kind of grew up into engineering from leaving school, became a combustion engineer, did a couple of other jobs in engineering, and then worked for an oil refinery. And I worked there for 10 years as a process operator. So very kind of hands on, tools based job. I was there for 10 years. And it wasn’t until about I got to about nine years, when I suddenly realized how unhappy I was, and how I just didn’t feel like I fitted in. I mean, when I started, I was one of, probably about over 700 people were operators at the time. And I was one of about three or four women in that role. And even saying that we never saw each other we varied across a whole site. So you wouldn’t see each other we were on shift. So again, it would just reduce the opportunities to interact with other women. And I recognized a few years ago how much I had changed myself and I became somebody I thought I needed to be rather than who I wanted to be myself and ironically, it wasn’t until having children that really became stark to me and you know how much I was sacrificing of myself to be somebody else at work as in another person at home, another person socially etc. So I think of my self as accidentally falling into EDI I didn’t go into it, I was open to what it was I actually wanted to do. So, like I said, I had two children. And after coming back from my second, I didn’t have a particularly good return to work, unfortunately, due to various factors, and again, got into contact with some some women on site who weren’t operators, but they were part of a women’s interest network in which I had never joined because I didn’t think it was relevant to me, it felt like it was sort of the admin people or you know, the engineers who were in the offices and you know, the more important people it wasn’t for people like me who, you know, effectively worked on the shop floor, but started talking to these women and building connections with them. And off the back of that, I thought, we need this in process. This is what we need, we’ve now got, I think, by the time I left, we had around 50 women working as operators. And we hardly knew each other, we, you know, there was no support there, you know, we’re all going through the same things individually and repeating the same mistakes, finding out the same information, rather than collectively doing it together. So I set up a network within the women’s interest network of process operators, just to try and bring us closer and to start sharing that learning. And as part of that helped with maternity mentoring, because again, that was another problem we have employing more and more young women who potentially would be going into having have starting families themselves. And to me, the organization wasn’t set up for having all of these women going and getting pregnant. Because again, working on a refinery when you’re pregnant is quite a challenge. You’re coming into contact with chemicals on a very regular basis, climbing ladders, swinging on massive valve open, very hard to do when you’re even doing your boots up can be quite hard when you are pregnant. So there’s a lot of challenges there, which I didn’t feel like we were necessarily set up for. So yeah, try to help get maternity mentors set up again to share that information, share that knowledge and that learning that people like myself who’d already gone through it had gathered and kind of sharing it onto other people. And then I made the decision that I wanted and needed to leave, I needed to do something else, I really got into the idea of working within equality, diversity, inclusion and decided that’s what I wanted to do. So had a big pivot a couple of years ago, took a long time to get a job because obviously my CV read very much as engineering, manufacturing. So when you go through sift, and I’ve got nothing to do with HR, nothing to do with corporate world at all, it was a hard process I applied for I don’t know how many jobs until eventually somebody saw something in me, thankfully, and took me on. So now I’m kind of going back to what Mark said, trying to earn my my EDI stripes at the moment, I’m trying to get the knowledge and really get the insight and learn the tools and the techniques as much as I can. But also, I really feel I fall on my experience and bringing that to the fore. Because where I think the gaps are, it isn’t well, there, there were obviously gaps at the C suite executive level, there was plenty of gaps there. But the problem is it doesn’t come down to the bottom, all these initiatives, they’re made by people who don’t experience the day to day of what it’s like to live, you know, as a minority in whatever group you’re in. So I’m really, really passionate about making interventions and EDI relevant to the people who are actually living it every single day. And again, speaking to Mark’s interest in the safety side, like he said, you know, working on refinery, safety is paramount, absolute paramount. But again, I think safe systems of work don’t work unless you’ve got psychological safety, because who’s going to report an incident or a potential incident if they don’t feel safe enough to raise their concerns. So again, psychological safety is a real interest area for me. So I’m currently doing some studying and trying to look into the gendered effect of psychological safety in terms of when people will learn about psychological safety, who has the biggest shift in terms of their learning? So do women experience the biggest change in perception of psychological safety? Or do men experience the biggest change in psychological safety perceptions? So yeah, I’m quite interested to see the results of that. See, what I found was, again, there’s very little research on psychological safety, interestingly.  It’s a relatively new concept in terms of psychology. And it’s so closely linked to to anything to do with EDI.  I think it’s fundamental, you can’t do initiatives to do with EDI unless you have psychological safety. So I really feel passionately, it’s the it’s the foundation of anything to do with EDI and making people feel safe to be who they are at work at home and whatever context that they’re in.

Sue Black 

Yeah, that’s a really good point. Thanks for sharing your experience, Lisa. And I think we’re all kind of, I hate the term, but on a journey in terms of understanding EDI and diversity and inclusion belonging in general. You know, it’s kind of interesting to see how we’re getting gradually better and better at it over the years, but I think we’ve still got a long way to go, right.

Lisa Nicholas 

Yes, we do, unfortunately. But more people now are aware and I think that’s you know, that’s a huge benefit is the awareness is raising, even if not getting the change. We are raising awareness if nothing else,

Jo Stansfield 

Paula, let’s go to you. Now, I’m curious about your experience because you’ve worked in an ajacent industry which is energy, and also in a different national culture, having come from all of your work in Brazil. What are the similarities and differences that you see? And what do you think that we can learn from them?

Paula Furtado Kohn 

Thank you again for having me here in this podcast, I was pleased to listen to what Kyra, and Lisa and Mark say, because it just  reinforces what I am doing and what I’m experiencing at research and in my practical, professional level, which is EDI, is everywhere. And we need to discuss how this impacts and is being implemented in all levels of the organization. So for example, from my experience in Brazil, I worked as a consultant in the energy industry. And what I could notice echoes what Lisa said, my experience was more likely few women in the sector. And if I could bring this to the chemical sector to do a better comparison with our topic here in this podcast, I would say that there are some similarities and some differences between Brazil and UK. If I could point similarities, I would say, in the chemical sector, there are very high skilled jobs. So people tend to have more access and knowledge around inclusion, equality, diversity, both countries are very innovative. We have a lot of studies, and we developed biofuels, biochemicals at levels and standards that are competitive globally. Like here in the UK.  But there are many differences that impact in culture, in organizational culture, and obviously, social culture in general. Let me give you an example. Although in Brazil, we follow a lot of the Western European and the United States way of doing business, we have some differences that are impacting in this way of doing business.  Let’s say a very practical example, if I get to a meeting with my boss in a company, and I, as a woman, together with the fact that I’m mixed race, I am a mature worker. And I have to ask a white background male engineer about something, I will be feeling threatened, I’ll be feeling insecure. During my research in Brazil, which I did for my thesis on my PhD, I looked into the main power industry supply chain, and how precarious work is developed there. And I realized that precarity comes to a level that affects people’s activity at work differently in a much worse way, because these workers are feeling insecure about the jobs. They are suffering by cultural aspects of races, gender issues, homophobia, a lot of things in the workplace, at workplace and outside the workplace. And although here in the UK, when I moved, I felt like EDI is a topic that’s more mentioned, there’s more knowledge around it. And that’s been more developed on it is still I see some similarities in the way and I see this from my personal perspective and experience, the way I was treated when I first came to England and moved here looking for new jobs opportunities, becoming a researcher and how I was seen by this scenario here. So I see a lot of similarities and differences. But what I wanted to add that could be more impactful for our discussion is that precarity in the global south is something else. We experienced precarity there forever. We don’t know what is a good quality work life. Everybody is expecting to work hard to earn less, to be exploited in every layer of of a job. So either at shop floor or as a top engineer, project manager in any project. So if I give you the example of a wind farm, the project manager is feeling as insecure as the technical workers that constructing concrete platforms for the wind towers. And so the level of insecurity that these all causes, bring some reflections into how people see themselves and bring more distance into achieving equality, diversity and inclusion, especially inclusion, I think. So I wanted to highlight this as one of the differences. But also, just to wrap up to say that the UK is experimenting precarity now with the crisis that we’ve been seen, and this is impacting in some levels of security at work, that is unprecedent. And maybe we should learn lessons from this, and looking how we can overcome this insecurity, this precarity and transform this into something that needs been looking at and treated differently, because it impacts in the way the way companies achieve circularity, it impacts in sustainability. And it impacts inclusion itself. So that’s what I wanted to, to add to the talk, echoing what I hear from Uganda,

Jo Stansfield 

I think that really strongly reinforces what Mark and Lisa have been talking about with this, the need for psychological safety. Is that a real fundamental piece. I’m wondering, Mark or Lisa, would you like to comment on what you’ve heard from Paula?

Mark McBride-Wright 

Just written in the chat, actually. Thank you, Paula, for that perspective, I have never heard of that angle before. And the concept of precarity and everything you just said there, I’d love to love to read your thesis actually. In fact, I’ll go on Google and try and find that afterwards. What can I say, Jo, I’ve grown up in the Global North, you know, I’ve never been in that workplace context that Paula has described. So I can only go through learned experience rather than lived experience. And I can, I can only imagine what that must feel like. And I can completely understand the ramifications it has on mentality. To me, I take it back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and having the basic foundations of the triangle. If you’re constantly… like psychological safety is one of those things, you know, in order to self actualize at the top and get up and thrive. But if in your workplace environment, you’re constantly just hovering around getting your basic needs, or you’ve got this precarious mindset of maintaining above the basics of what you need to just do well, then, I don’t know, you know, business, government and industry needs to work at creating a better set together to make sure more people are moving up to that and not feeling in this place of uncertainty.

Lisa Nicholas 

I always think it’s really interesting, because EDI at the moment anyway, tends to look at in the UK, the nine protected characteristics, but a lot of organizations now are expanding and starting to look at geographic location, socio economic status and things. So I think that what you’re describing Paula, probably isn’t in like the collective consciousness is it? People aren’t, because, again, because of our privilege, living where we do growing up in the society we grew up in isn’t something we necessarily think of, although I’m sure there are people, even in society in the UK, who experienced this precarity, of this uncertainty looking at, you know, what are these contracts called?

Jo Stansfield 

zero hours contracts?

Lisa Nicholas 

zero hours, that’s the word I was looking for, sorry, is a zero hours contract. So you know, even that you’re on our doorstep, we’ve got people experiencing that precarity, that uncertainty about where where’s their pay check going to be coming from? Are they going to? Yeah, are they going to be in employment in a week’s time? So yeah, I can’t imagine living like Mark, I’ve not experienced that myself. And I’m very fortunate to not have experienced that. So I can’t imagine what that would be like on a daily basis.

Mark McBride-Wright 

With some leaders that I’ve worked with, it does take them back to their childhood. And if they’re from a working class background, or low socio economic background, that is a moment in time. So that’s how far back in time some people need to go to feel that reference point, you know, or feeling like they want to do better or have a better life. So yeah, that I grew up on. My mom had me when she was 16. And I grew up on a council estate and never did I think university would be within my realm. So it was a lot later in life, though, that that aspect of who I am, came to mind in terms of an experience that I’ve gone through or feeling different or not feeling the same as others.

Jo Stansfield 

Can I come back to something that you’ve talked about Paula as well, which is about some of the impacts on our industry from this precarity and the potential exclusion that that causes? You mentioned about circularity and sustainability and making it much harder to reach those goals. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Paula Furtado Kohn 

Well, the reason I mentioned was because when looking to the aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion that affects the way companies achieve circularity, for example, sustainability goals, it has a major impact because there’s research that shows that if people at work are not well connected, or not feeling safe well enough to express themselves and reach out for these goals collectively, even at a leadership level, it’s very difficult to conduct situations where you, you don’t have this amount of equality surrounding people to make them feel safe. This impacts in the way you achieve your goals. Because if we’re in, let’s say, teamwork, for example, it impacts on teamwork, it impacts on your well being. You don’t feel like you’re up for work, you feel oppressed, you don’t feel like you want to interact. And this is what is missing. In sustainability. We need to discuss these things. It’s all integrated, it’s all linked. We need to get together and make all these things work as one thing to be able to achieve certain goals that sound like unbeatable by some people, because they don’t see how they can reach out his goals. And so numerical goals are one thing, but the expectancy in reflecting what workers feel like they contributed to the company, and will impact even in how many people will leave their jobs. Because it’s not only unemployment that we have to think of, it’s about people who wants to leave, they quit that jobs presented is, as we say, and how this impacting productivity. So circular economy and sustainability are together in this because there’s no sustainable world, if you’re, as a worker, don’t feel safe, secure, and producing something better to this world. So the personal aspect of things are constantly left behind is, the last one to be discussed by top decision makers. And at government level, policy level. And we need to bring this to the conversation is, as one big problem. It’s all part of the problem

Jo Stansfield 

It is a huge connected ecosystem for sure. And Kyra, I’m interested in some of your experiences, something you’ve talked about is about the difference in culture that students experience as they leave university and they enter industry. And actually, they can put up some barriers. Can you tell us a bit more about what you’ve seen happening?

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

So one of the interesting things is that all three of the other guests touched on it was about the community. And their understanding and acceptance and developing of EDI strategies. And also moving us forward. When Lisa and Mark were talking about the lack of understanding across these the industry, one of the things that came to mind immediately was this issue that we see regularly in university, because universities tend to be a really supportive, liberal institution and also community that understands that young people are developing who they are, they are trying to express and explore themselves. And this gives them a level of freedom perhaps they didn’t have before they came to university. And what tends to happen is students are finding themselves and that’s a really wonderful space for them. Right? It’s it’s we as academics and as a university community strive to support them through this. And one of the things that often happens is as they’re doing that, and then they’re confronted with the realities of going to an industry that doesn’t necessarily… hasn’t moved as quickly towards equality, diversity, inclusivity principles is they find themselves at odds. So they’ve spent this time developing, exploring themselves, and really getting confidence in who they are. And then they’re faced with the reality that the outside world, if you want to think of it that way, doesn’t necessarily mesh as naturally. So one of the interesting cases is when a student goes a year in industry, which for chemical engineers, mechanical engineers is very common, is they often are confronted really abruptly with this experience because they get to an environment which not only is really different in culture, from the perspective that as a student, your life is certainly not nine to five. And so they they’re thrown into a nine to five environment with a manager and all these types of things. And whilst there’s an effort to give them, you know, a transition experience. And it all of a sudden, not only is it abrupt in terms of that kind of basic cultural change, but it’s really abrupt in terms of what is in place to support them in terms of their own personal development and who they are as a human being. And so we often see students come back from that, and some find it really difficult, the prospect then of continuing forward, because they don’t know what, where they’re going to go as an environment where they’re going to feel confident. And in my role with the foundation industries, through InnovateUK Future Leaders Group, one of the things we’ve been looking at is what specific things actually are really missing, and make an employer or an industry feel, and fail to serve in terms of those sort of equality, diversity and inclusivity aspects. And it’s a wide range, because of course, we’re talking about a huge number of, quote, differences. And so we’re talking about this enormous space. And it means lots of different things to lots of different people with different tolerance levels. And so it’s about having, a lot of times for us at this point, it’s honest conversations with students about, you know, what they are looking for, and what they sort of need and want. But the other flip side to this, which has been highlighted by some forward thinking companies is the reality that they can attract really great talent, by opening and looking at how they can be more inclusive, they can look at equality and diversity, because all of a sudden, that’s going to make your workplace more appealing to the younger generation who is finding that they can, they can be who they want to be and who they are, instead of kind of forcing them into some stereotypical box that I think was expected historically, in these industries, right, that you looked a certain way you behaved a certain way you thought a certain way. And so I think this is a dynamic and an interplay that’s very, very interesting. As Lisa pointed out, now, university graduates sometimes end up on the shop floor, but sometimes end up in other positions, which might be office based. So the problem doesn’t necessarily address the issues around apprenticeships and people coming in right after you know, school leavers. But what it does is it creates a large cohort of people who are coming in who see those issues, which means it’s going to be an influence within a community. And understanding by coming out of the university with a supportive community, hopefully, they will be and be able to engender even more change in terms of creating that type of community wherever they go. And so it’s true that that that tussle is only hitting a certain dynamic, but realistically, that’s sort of how that particular aspect works. But it’s something that we’ve been working hard about talking to employers about, and making sure that sort of their environment is going to meet the needs and the expectations, which I think is a really, really healthy thing for everyone to be evolving dynamically together in this respect.

Jo Stansfield 

Lisa, I think you have something that you’d like to add to that.

Lisa Nicholas 

Yeah. Yeah, I think we both Paula and Kyra both kind of addressed this. It’s the fact that when we talk about EDI, it feels like to a lot of people, it’s a bit of a buzzword. It’s like another thing we’ve gosh, we’ve got to think about diversity, or another box to tick. But what people are really missing out on is the value that it can bring. And, and for me like do, like I said earlier, psychological safety is the foundations that then leads to people feeling like they can they belong there included, that then leads to diversity. And at the top of that pyramid is money because the more diverse, there’s so many studies out there that look at the impact of the effect of diverse teams, and they all lead to increased profitability. So for organizations to ignore that, to me is mind blowing. I don’t see why we’re not embracing EDI, culturally because of the benefits it can bring us and you know, aside from the monetary gains, it has positive impact on wellbeing and for the individuals it increases positive emotions which then impacts on well being it increases trust amongst people, it improves retention rates for organizations so there’s so many positive aspects when you think about you do you start digging into it that go below the surface of you know, what everybody hears about in the news perhaps or on Twitter or X you know, things like that. It’s actually there’s so many benefits to it isn’t just a buzzword, but the token the thing now, we really, really do need to, if you want to be successful anyway as an organization, and attract the talent, like Kyra’s said, you know, if you want those kids coming out of university, who has spent years and years learning about their subject area, and you want to use their knowledge, then you need to make it an inclusive place. You really need to because I’m not going to work for you. Ultimately, they will go elsewhere to companies who are more progressive and keen to keep their staff as happy and productive as possible.

Sue Black 

Yes, absolutely. That’s, I think that’s a really great place to finish. Lisa, thanks very much. And thank you so much to everybody for a fabulous conversation. I feel like we can carry on talking for a very long time, it’s like we’ve only just got started. So because we’re out of time, now we’re going to go into our quickfire questions. The first one is, what’s your favourite thing about the foundation industries? And why? And we’ll go to Paula first,

Paula Furtado Kohn 

I would say is the power of its network. And they acknowledge that we need a shift towards sustainability that is more inclusive as well, I think is the technology and knowledge of this power that can move us forward very positively.

Sue Black 

Great. Thank you, Mark.

Mark McBride-Wright 

I think the foundation industries have, by definition laid the foundations upon which you know, we’ve built modern society, would things have been built differently? Had we been more inclusive in the past? Probably, yes. So I think now, as Paula’s just said, that we’re in this shift to a more sustainable future. We’ve also got an opportunity here to bring in more voices, increase our representation, and have different voices contributing to the future goals.

Sue Black 

Great, thanks, Mark. Kyra,

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

The foundation industries are the bedrock of how we have moved from a society that in fact, was even more well, even more unequal, right, if we think back to medieval times and the disparities, and so it helped us help to propel us forward as a society as a culture globally. But that doesn’t mean that it needs to be a stagnant thing. And actually, if we take the mindset of the Industrial Revolution, where the foundation industries, I would argue, we could have almost an industrial revolution of our own in terms of not only continuing to develop and change versus sustainability from an environmental perspective, but also about sustainability in terms of our ability to be inclusive, our ability to make sure that we are propelling these, our next generations forward, to create a society that continues to be better for all who are to come.

Sue Black 

Amazing, thank you, Kyra. Lisa,

Lisa Nicholas 

Well, everyone else has answered this in a really philosophical, moral and ethical perspective. And I completely agree with what’s been said, but I’m gonna go from a personal perspective, I think, for me, I’m not in it now. But one of the things I do miss was the fact that I never knew what I was walking into day to day or shift to shift, you never knew. So it was always something not always good. But it was always something different. So you know, every shift, it could be nice, smooth, plain sailing, hardly anything required. Other days, it could be everything that’s gone to pot unit shut down. So you just never knew. So there’s always that little bit of excitement in the air, because you’re always you’re always… there’s anticipation, I suppose of the what could happen. Great. Thanks, Lisa. So next question. Which foundational material would you find it hardest to live without? And I guess it’s easiest to just keep the same order. So I think Paula, you were first

Paula Furtado Kohn 

I’m gonna say paper.

Sue Black 

Great. Thank you. Good. shorten and to the point. What would we do without paper? Right? Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. Mark,

Mark McBride-Wright 

I probably see metal, they’re so important. It’s such plays such a crucial role in technology, transportation, infrastructure, you know, we need it just for modern life, functionality and progress, so I choose metals.

Sue Black 

Great. Thanks, Mark. Kyra.

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

It’s interesting to see that we’ve all chosen different things, I would choose chemicals, not just because I’m a chemical engineer, but because it moves us from the foundation of very small molecules through to greater things. And even now we can see the requirement of them because we are struggling to develop more sustainable versions and people can’t live without them.

Sue Black 

Great. Thank you. Lisa.

Lisa Nicholas 

And this one pains me but I’m going to be honest and say it’s probably plastic. And it’s something I’m trying to change actively. But my headsets made from plastic case and my laptop’s made from plastic. It Yeah, I’m trying to make changes in my own life. But it is hard. Isn’t it so ingrained into everything we do nowadays? Sadly.

Sue Black 

Thank you. And our last question, which material is most like your personality and why? Paula.

Paula Furtado Kohn 

I would pick cement. There’s a few reasons for it. First, I think it symbolizes my resilience. And I’ve been told that I am a resilient person. I’m starting to believe in it because I’m still here, moving on, but also the plasticity. I’m easily adaptable to challenges that comes towards me. And just to pick up on paper and explain why I cannot live without paper, I really think is a good sustainable option to have in hand, to write, to read. But also there’s many uses that paper can have can be implemented in different areas to substitute plastic sorry Lisa, and even metals Mark, but also contains a lot of chemicals doesn’t it, Kyra. So we have to keep that in mind.

Sue Black 

That’s great. Mark,

Mark McBride-Wright 

I like to think of myself as glass.  Transparent, adaptable, resilient as well. I like to think, give perspective, like to reflect back to people what they’ve shared with me to help them learn to as I process my learning, clarity, strength, versatility as well, you know, it’s quite a versatile material that you can use in different contexts. So yeah, I like the idea of of glass. So I’m choosing that one.

Sue Black 

Wonderful, I’m loving these answers are so good and kind of well thought through. Thank you, Kyra,

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

I don’t want to say the full metals, I say steel, because it has an incredible amount of strength. And I like to think that I have an incredible amount of strength.

Sue Black 

Great, thank you. And Lisa,

Lisa Nicholas 

Again, I’m probably going to go with a slightly controversial one, because it’s something I wish we didn’t have but probably petrol or diesel, because I like to think of myself as helping people on their journeys. And obviously, at the moment, we need petrol or diesel to help people in their car journeys. So yeah, I suppose. Yeah, helping people along their own journeys of their lives and supporting and assisting them where I can.

Sue Black 

Wow, amazing. So it’s such amazing answers. I think, Jo, we’re gonna have to come up with us at some point in the series as well. So we should probably start thinking about our answers to that question.

Mark McBride-Wright 

Ah come on, that’s getting out of it, give us an answer now on the spot.

Sue Black 

No, no, no, we can’t do that. All right. Well, I mean, thank you so much, everybody for a fantastic, really, really thought provoking discussion. It’s just been really wonderful. So thank you very much to our wonderful guests today.

Lisa Nicholas 

Yeah. Thank you.

Paula Furtado Kohn 

Thank you.

Kyra Sedransk Campbell 

Thank you for having us. Yeah.

—

Sue Black

Thank you for joining us for this Equity Edge episode.

Jo Stansfield

This Podcast can be found on our website www.transfire-hub.org/podcast and is also available on all good podcast channels.

Sue Black

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