In a recent conversation with The Women of Today, Heather Hayes, the Global HR Director, and Adele Ara, the CTO, shared their innovative approach to fostering a culture of inclusion that transcends conventional DE&I frameworks.
With remarkable growth from just 6 employees in 2010 to over 1,200 today, Lightsource bp exemplifies how a strong commitment to its people and values can drive success. Through initiatives like the VIBES program, which empowers employees to lead community-driven efforts, and unique policies designed to ensure inclusivity at all levels, Lightsource bp demonstrates that embedding DE&I into the core of an organisation is essential for long-term cultural and business success.
Read the full interview below:
INTRO
The Women of Today is an organisation that empowers women to pursue careers in Renewable Energy whilst exploring creative strategies to assist organisations with their DE&I.
We feel it is important to highlight leading organisations that get their DE&I right and in this interview we are spotlighting Lightsource bp.
WOT:
We are joined today with the lovely Heather Hayes, Global HR Director, and Adele Ara, CTO from Lightsource bp, decoding Lightsource bp’s secret to success for diversity, equity and inclusion.
From their insights program, VIBES community, embedded values and many more initiatives they run, we are here to find out more on how they get their DE&I right, so let’s get to it.
Over to you Heather.
Heather Hayes:
I'm Heather Hayes, I'm the Global HR Director for Lightsource bp. I've been here about four and a half years now and have been involved with Lightsource bp as it sort of evolved internationally.
So my role has been to come and ensure that we grow in a way that holds Lightsource bp's values and cultures at the forefront of what we do.
Adele Ara:
It's lovely to be here. I’m Adele Ara, the Chief Technology Officer of Lightsource bp. I have been in Lightsource bp for more than nine years now covering different roles. I was leading our asset management function first. Then I was responsible for our global business operation.
And now I have the honour of leading our center of excellence in engineering innovation, IT & digital, and very important & close to my heart, two of our key values, actually our safety & quality team and our sustainability team. So excited to be here and share our story.
WOT:
You're definitely the right person to join us today and I'm looking forward to talking a bit more about Lightsource bp. As an organisation, if you could perhaps just give us a quick overview of what Lightsource bp does as a snapshot?
Adele Ara:
So Lightsource bp was founded to deliver solar to our world. We are an operator, owner, and developer. Development is very much in the DNA of our solar plants.
So, when Lightsource bp was founded, it was 2010 and I think we had a very exciting journey in the past 13 years with a very remarkable growth.
So just to give you some data points to showcase how this growth has developed, in the past 13 years, when Lightsource bp was founded, they had only six employees. Today, 13 years later, we are more than 1200.
You probably have more information, but this is the exponential growth that we have gone through and quite a substantial part of this growth has happened during the COVID years. So, in a completely remote, and new way of working, if you like.
For us from a development perspective, we have developed almost nine gigawatts since the inception of solar projects. And whilst we have started our journey being very much a UK-focused developer and since then we are now operating in 19 different countries globally.
Our expansion is not only in terms of our pool of talent, not only in terms of the countries in which we operate but also in terms of our business model and how vertically integrated we are in the lifecycle of our projects.
We now look after the development and construction of our sites. We look after the operation of our sites from an asset management, operations, and maintenance perspective. And of course, we look at investment lifecycles as well. So we are a fully integrated solar player if you like.
And what I think is nice to remark about this journey that we are going through at bp is how this partnership allowed us to grow even faster, to be truly our Lightsource bp DNA and really, truly embrace the key characteristics that have made Lightsource bp so successful in the first few years of operation.
So, whilst bp is helping I suppose, raise the bar on several corporate-related aspects of our operation, really, how we carry ourselves, our value, and how we operate in solar development is really down to us. And that is proving to be a very successful recipe.
WOT:
Yeah, it's quite amazing how far you've come in such a short space of time, but along that journey what I find so interesting and refreshing is that you haven't forgotten about your people during that time.
In fact, quite the opposite. And I think, Heather, you're probably a great one to tell us a little bit more about Lightsource bp's diversity and inclusion programs.
Heather Hayes:
Sure. So we don't really see it as a program. We see it really as a culture of inclusion as an organisation.
You know, I think we're really fortunate that from our founders down, there's a real belief that people, smart people, people who can speak out, are what is at the core of our success.
And so really we focused very, very heavily on how we create or continue to provide the environment to let people be themselves at Lightsource bp.
And we've done that in several ways. You know, we've set out very clear values, which all organisations have. But what we've done is, we've then translated those values through to cultural norms, things like be you, be responsible, be recognised, be inspired. That's sort of how we want these values to show out for people.
And then we supported all of that with, you know, it's not led by HR. It's not led by leadership.
We've set up a voluntary group, in the organisation that we call VIBES, and they are there to represent and hold us all to account for making sure that we retain the inclusion and the culture that we think started our self on the road to success.
WOT:
VIBES is actually what I came across. I was reading a bit more about that and what that looks like contextually. And I think it's a great point.
I think that my takeaway from our initial conversation was, you know when most of the time I'm talking about programs of work with organisations and there's very specific targets.
I've just come away from a conversation where we were talking about a 40% target from a gender perspective, to have 40% of women in the organisation.
So I think, although that there's no I wouldn't say necessarily a wrong way to do it, I think that there are some unique and different ways to do it and my takeaway, and maybe you can help flesh this out a little bit more was when we had that conversation, the way that you approached it was more around the culture itself, and the way that you almost bring people in organically because you attract people by the programs that you preach and then put together, maybe you could explain for everyone a little bit more.
You were talking about the benefits program and the visa program. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about those?
Heather Hayes:
Yeah Sure. So, we try to underpin all of the sort of inclusive culture with policies, processes, you know, recruitment.
We provide all of our hiring teams with questions around behavioural assessment, and technical assessment. They themselves are pretty good at that.
But we really focus on what are the behavioural aspects that we're looking for at Lightsource bp, to make sure that the right people are walking through the door. To attract a positive group of people. They tend to be purpose-led.
So we're always looking to match that, when we interview, when we select people. During onboarding, you know, we make sure that everybody goes through an onboarding program that emphasises what Lightsource bp values in terms of behaviour.
You know, people can learn online about what we deliver and do, but that sort of culture is something that we need to explain to everybody.
Performance, we weigh people's performance assessments equally on behaviour and delivery. So, it's an equal balance, we rate them the same.
I think you mentioned the reward programs. We have a program that is called a retention bank program. And normally you would see, LTIP programs sort of aimed at the senior roles in the organisation or a specific group of people.
Whereas at Lightsource bp, the idea is that every single person matters to the success of the company, and therefore everybody is involved in the retention programs.
Everybody's rewarded. And, in effect, if you're here in three years' time, you will be rewarded with an extra bonus because that's what's important.
So, sort of underpinning the things that we promise people with delivery on those things, those are the kind of programs in relation to the visa program. Again, it's a bit about being non-hierarchical about who and what we spend money on to bring in for specific roles. And we don't sort of say, you have to be on a mid to senior level role for us to invest in a visa for you to come in if it's in the UK, for example, or to go to the Spanish office. So, we end up with a very international community who travel to any of our offices.
For the 19 countries we have been talking about, you know, we will provide a visa to somebody, if we feel they're going to be a good fit for us just because it might be a junior role at the start, but hopefully they in ten year’s time will be successful and perhaps in more senior or have a broader career Lightsource bp.
So, the investment in things that seem quite small, like you know, visas, actually drives that principle of welcoming as many people as you can from different backgrounds into your organisation.
WOT:
And Adele, where does senior management come into play with these programs? I know there are quite a few, not just senior management, but employees who are part of the VIBES program. But how do they contribute to this?
Adele Ara:
So as Heather was explaining, I think one of the fantastic aspects of VIBES, is that it is really on a volunteering basis. So, every employee who wishes to contribute to our VIBES committee is very welcome to do so.
There is a global committee and then there are the country and regional committees and therefore the initiatives that they decide to carry out are very much driven by what the volunteers believe is most important for the organisation from time to time and the type of initiatives that are carried out are quite a variety of different opportunities.
We have our Lightsource bp Foundation that we support together with World Vision, but then there are multiple opportunities for the team to come up with new creative ideas
for fundraising.
Besides that, there are a lot of wellbeing initiatives, so colleagues trying their best to look after each other and a lot of cultural initiatives too. The pride of being of a specific nationality in a place where there are 50 different nationalities. We have a breakfast organised by the Portuguese team and you know, delicious pastries, and they talk a bit about their country while you are having breakfast. Two days ago, we got an email in our inbox from VIBES explaining that we want to get an international recipe book, and if you have a recipe that you’re very affectionate about, to just please send us the recipe. So, it's these types of very small initiatives, but they come from our colleagues, from what they think is important to them.
We have more structured programs as well. For example, every month we have a sort of celebration of a specific topic such as Black History Month, Pride Month, or Earth Month.
We have speakers that the VIBES committee looks for, organises, and gets them in so that they can share their experiences with the rest of the organisation.
There is a very extensive variety of different initiatives, it all comes from the employee themselves willing to engage with their working community because this is what we are. At the end of the day, this is a community of people who share the same purpose, people who share the same values, and hopefully, people who have different ideas on how to get there, because ultimately the diversity of thoughts is what we are trying to drive.
Even when we talk about be you, be creative, be the change, be inspired, all of this is really about be the person you want to be. As long as you respect those values and behaviours, the more diversity we have in the way we think collectively, the better. And I think this is the strength of the program really from perspective.
WOT:
Community and culture, are the two words that I take away from that, and that's something I've spoken over with a lot of people who work for Lightsource bp, and for no pun intended, but there is a different vibe.
There's just a general attitude of community that I find and everybody seems to be very much working towards the same goal. And it's a very, I suppose, relaxed but inspiring environment. And I pick that up from the people that I speak to very naturally. It can be very different in other organisations where I've spoken to before and it does seep through, so when you're creating that internally, the way that it's being seen from an external perspective, is quite unique.
And I think the way that you're tackling this, where you're not necessarily looking at a certain percentage like we talked about earlier, but creating a culture that naturally brings that in is working. But some of the challenges I know that we've talked about could be around how do you monitor that, and how do you really look at the successes that you've had from that?
Maybe you can explain that to us.
Heather Hayes:
I think you do have to understand whether you're being successful or not. It's really easy to say, we're doing all these wonderful things and it not to impact the people who it's all for, right?
So again, we are quite a chatty organisation. You know, we like to talk, we like to know what everybody else is thinking. And that means it's not just extroverts, but it's introverts and extroverts.
We just look for different ways to find out what people are thinking. You know, we have a fantastic internal communications team who are really good at helping the organisation understand and interpret what all of the individuals in your organisation want to hear, and how they want it expressed. They really translate that beautifully for the organisation. And then we do use metrics, like we use an engagement survey.
We followed up the engagement survey with an inclusion survey very specifically to say; Do you feel you're involved in decision-making?
Do you understand why decisions are made?
Do you feel you can be yourself at work and do you feel you can speak up?
So we do both general engagement and wellbeing and inclusion surveys.
We look at our turnover. You know, we generally sort of believe that if people are unhappy, they will leave us! No matter how much we pay or anything.
Culture is really important to people and they will leave. And we've brought turnover down, which again is a positive indicator for us.
We have a speak-up line and a compliance line. Again, we simply look at that, we look at how many grievances we get, so formal ways for people to raise their discontent.
So we look at that and we report that at the board level, and we also get feedback from externals, and whilst we don't sort of do it, you know, in the way that a marketing function would sort of look at satisfaction maybe, we do listen to people who interact with us on a professional basis, who feedback about the feel, the respect that we share with people who interact with us. So those are the measures that quite often we look at.
WOT:
Great. Thank you.
There was one initiative in particular that I was borderline emotional, which was the Elm branch Solar project.
I don't know who's more familiar with that, but could you tell me a little bit about it? It was the veteran project in the US, helping build a solar farm. Is that right?
Adele Ara:
So, I would say it’s part of our sustainability pillar and I mean it is one of our five values, and very much we look at energy for people and communities but also the people that we work with, our business partner, etc..
One of the opportunities that became apparent in the US with one of our EPC companies, the company that we used to build effectively, they did the projects on the site and keen to involve the local community in a slightly different way and give people an opportunity to reskill, retrain and learn a new job.
The specific community they decided to target in the area was a community of veterans who, of course, have served in the US Army, and came back not necessarily having different skills to undertake a different job in the civilian environment. And therefore, we partnered with this agency contractor. They and we ensured that they had the proper training and they supported the construction of the site and worked on site with our more experienced construction workers.
So, we had the dual positive aspect of the community of an increase in construction jobs. Of course, that is a positive benefit that would bring in any community where we'd be on the site.
But in this particular opportunity, we helped the community that perhaps sometimes is not as advantaged as others to reskill, re-train, and make sure that they can express their talent also in the civilian environment.
So, I think that was a very nice opportunity and initiative for us to try to bring our sustainability principles and values to the next level.
WOT:
And it's twofold because, we all know that this is a candidate-shy market and we don't have enough people to do the work that needs to be done to hit the targets that everybody needs to hit.
So, to be able to take from, you know, another industry or to retrain and to help build that workforce is just so valuable, not only from that perspective but also from a diversity and inclusion perspective.
It was really rewarding to be able to read that and understand that further. So, tell us a little bit more about obstacles and how you've overcome them generally when you have been looking to create this culture at Lightsource bp.
Heather Hayes:
I think so, again I think, you know, really where we see ourselves is protecting the culture that has grown pretty organically.
We haven't sort of managed it. So, we’ve done a lot of protection of what we care about.
But as you get bigger, you know, probably move from 400 to 1200 in the period of time that we've been thinking more about this and focusing on it, you end up with a challenge that everybody has different interests.
So, to have a culture that reflects the people in your organisation becomes increasingly challenging. And we've had instances where people are not interested or engaged in topics that other people are interested in, and that's kind of everyone goes “It doesn't represent me”.
And so we've had to keep educating people and creating awareness that it's about including everybody and diverse views and different perspectives.
And people have seen it as political. Sometimes some of the agenda topics have been seen to be political or some of them have been seen to be geographically unattractive.
And so, we've just learned, we've just listened to people. We've understood why people may object to certain things. Some of it's a bit about more conversation about it. Some of it's about empowering VIBES teams in the regions to go, well, we're not going to tell you what to do.
It's up to you. It's supposed to reflect your region.
So, you know, those are some particular obstacles people don't have, haven't naturally gravitated towards the idea of a program that they are being.
We have a lot of people who don't like to be managed, right? So you say you're managing culture or you're managing DE&I and instantly, they are going to put up obstacles to it. So really, that's for me, the biggest obstacles that I found.
Adele Ara:
So, I think your point is that we haven't created this, it was very organic. I think I have a little anecdote.
So back in 2015, at the time, we were still in this wonderful office already, but we were a UK-focused company, based in the UK, and so we had a very limited international market and observation point or interest at that point in time.
And one day, my new team admin joined the team. She's originally from Jamaica, so she has a Jamaican passport, and in the middle of the day our CEO comes all happy and jumpy and cheerful to my desk and says we are at 26!
This is the 26th nationality of the team. So that was our starting point. Our starting point has always been one of as long as you can do your job.
We don't care who you are, where you are from, what you do, you’re a man or woman doesn't matter. As long as you can do your job. There’s a place for you.
And I think that is the ultimate foundation of this culture that, as Heather was saying, was not that managed at all. It was kind of naturally growing with us.
And I think to give credit to your work and your team's work, I think something fantastic that you have done to facilitate the continuous growth and evolution of this culture is all of the management and leadership programs that you guys have designed to be bespoke.
For us, what is a crucial part of the training is our values and therefore, as leaders in managing this organisation, you are expected to be like this. And that, I think, is a very, very powerful tool because it's not telling me what I have to do, it's telling me what this community is expecting from me as a leader or a manager in this environment.
I think that is a very strong cultural alignment tool because if you don't feel comfortable with that, to your point, you're not going to be able to work with us. And I think embedding that cultural element, that expectation of behaviours in our leadership programs is a very important tool. So maybe I'm very naive, but for me, it was pretty straightforward.
WOT:
So please tell me about the personality showcasing or that's what I call it, but what is it that you call it?
Heather Hayes:
It's the insights program. Again, that's about growth, welcoming people in, and making sure that people start to think about how to communicate with each other.
It’s very much a growth tool for new teams.
WOT:
Would you class that under inclusion, right?
Heather Hayes:
That exactly.
Adele Ara:
And conflict management
Heather Hayes:
That's a benefit.
No, because actually, I mean when we realised how much we had grown, we still had room we thought, might be a year later actually.
And then, and then basically went well, X, Y, and Z. How does your recruitment machine run? You know, what are the things, how many desks are there, you know. Very practical things.
And then we went, how does it feel to not only have to move along to let somebody sit down next to you and all of us have to help the new people understand our environment and train on the job and all of that type of thing.
But some people were having to do it for two people here because that was the speed of growth. So, we sort of thought actually, a lot of what we do is about actually just making it easier for people to be inclusive and to follow the culture. And so, we said, okay, train some of the HR team up in insights, which is a sort of fairly simple psychological profiling, but it's focused on how teams communicate.
So not only are you able to explain to everybody else very quickly how you work, but it explains how you get the best out of other people. And it was just a tool we thought would help us sort of stabilise the organisation as we get more and more and more people in and then we were not highly structured, so, everyone was sort of thinking, well, are they taking a bit of my job or am I going to miss out on something? Or so we just emphasised that, you know, don't worry, you know, let's just learn how to communicate.
Let's understand what priorities other people have. And then it'll be easier to have that many new people in the organisation.
Adele Ara:
It also has helped us create a language. So, in a very non-confrontational way, you can say you can explain to somebody either if you're uncomfortable or you can put a disclaimer.
I am 66% red
WOT:
She says in her red dress, I notice you really like red..
Adele Ara:
64% green, and yellow is nowhere to be seen…
But for example, my communication tips, if somebody communicated with me, I mean, I ask a lot of questions, I'm very inquisitive that that's the way my mind works and that's the way I absorb information.
And what became very apparent is that with another type of personality, my constant questioning is perceived as either a lack of trust or trying to understand if they did something wrong or if I'm looking for a fault, which is absolutely not the intention of where my questioning comes from.
It's just that I'm very intellectually curious.
So now that I know that, yeah, if I perceive that somebody is getting a bit anxious about my question and like just to be clear, I’m red, that's why I’m asking this question.
WOT:
I love that.
I think overall it's, you know, it's just a testament to yourself, Heather, and Adele as well.
You know, just what you've done in such a short space of time. I think overall, it's as I said before, it's very refreshing to see organisations making this a priority.
The point of this interview and bringing this to a close is realistically, we need to start looking at this from a priority perspective as an industry holistically. And to see organisations leading from the front, is the type of organisation that we want to target as a business.
You know, for us, one of the things that we want to do and what we're passionate about is helping organisations get to where they need to get for net zero.
But there's a lot of detail in between that you can leave out. And I think a lot of people look at this as something that may be secondary. And in fact, it is the primary focus, in order to get us there.
I appreciate both of your time in explaining more about what Lightsource bp has done and what they've accomplished from a diversity and inclusion perspective.
Thank you so much and look forward to seeing more from you both.