Rooted in Nordic heritage, Equinor, an international energy company, is leading the charge to explore new frontiers. While its foundation is in oil and gas, the company has expanded its reach to include wind and solar, and it’s becoming a driving force in renewables.
We are pleased to welcome Equinor, a company that recognizes that our world needs all forms of energy, as a new corporate member of Pink Petro. Equinor is diversifying its offerings and its workforce to help build a better tomorrow.
Equinor’s mission to build a fully diverse workforce
When asked why the company wanted to partner with Pink Petro, the answer was clear – it fit well with Equinor’s core values: Open, Collaborative, Courageous, and Caring. These four values are at the heart of everything this energy company does, and they drive their decisions.
Diversity and inclusiveness ties directly to the company values. From the top down, leadership has set expectations for its employees to follow. Equinor is on a mission to build a workforce that consists of the best people and reflects the diverse businesses, partners, and countries where it is present.
“Diversity to us includes experience, competence, age, gender, education, cultural background, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities, and more –all that helps shape our thoughts and perspectives. We want everyone in Equinor to feel like they are part of one team, shaping the future and delivering on our goals and mission.”
Ana Nordang, VP People and Leadership, Equinor
In 2018, Equinor launched an ambition that all teams in the company should be diverse and inclusive by 2025. To achieve this, the company first drew awareness to this mission on a global stage. They outlined why D&I is important, how it aligns with company values, and how it helps Equinor deliver on its business strategy. Some of the company’s initial steps have included:
- Putting a focus on diversity to achieve balance in deployment, development, promotion and succession.
- Incorporating D&I in leadership expectations and leadership development programs.
- Promoting training awareness and training on diversity and inclusion, including unconscious bias training.
- Offering global paid parental leave for all Equinor employee groups.
- Creating a Global Development Program for talents from our regional offices.
- Promoting interest in science and other STEM topics in schools and communities to create a pipeline of future talents from diverse backgrounds.
Equinor recognizes that diversity and inclusion are not only the right thing to do, they drive better business decisions and deliver better results. The company has come far in making D&I part of its culture by focusing on balancing gender in a traditionally male-dominated industry. Equinor has consciously worked for some time in developing experience and capabilities through encouraging and enabling cross business areas and process network moves for all in the organization.
These efforts are already showing results. As it stands, the company has diversified one-third of all its 20,000+ employees and contractors in over 30 countries worldwide.
Women at Equinor
As part of their efforts to build a culture around diversity and inclusion, Equinor launched Women at Equinor (WE) in August 2018. WE is a community of men and women who support the growth and development of women at Equinor.
“We began researching, getting input from women across the organization, making connections, and even meeting with peer companies with programs like the one we wanted to start,” explained Sonia Hernandez-Cordon who co-chairs WE along with Michele O’Callaghan.
Each location has developed its own unique chapter, however, all WE chapters provide:
- Opportunities for members to network, share information, and learn from one another.
- Learning and development opportunities.
- Visibility and profile of women leaders in Equinor.
- Support outreach programs to drive STEM education and attract female talent to Equinor.
According to Agnes Johansen, vice president of People and Leadership for the US, “The goals of this group align well with our overall Diversity and Inclusion strategy, so I was happy to not only serve as an advisor for the group but also help them to anchor it with the US leadership team. I appreciate that this was very much driven and is being executed by our people. I hope this is the first of many such people-led employee groups.”
