Shell awarded advocate status by The Workplace Pride Global 2024 Benchmark
At Shell, we have a goal of becoming one of the most diverse and inclusive organisations in the world. That’s why we have been working hard, for many years, to create an environment where our LGBT+ colleagues feel they belong and where their contributions are valued and recognised.
What makes this year so special is that The Workplace Pride Global 2024, the international platform for LGBT+ inclusion at work, has just awarded Shell a score of 97.2% (up from 90.34% in 2023) – our best ever score in 10 years. This accomplishment earns us ADVOCATE status and praise from the judging body that we are ‘among the very best, truly leading the way for others’. We are one of only ten companies to be awarded this status.
Whilst we rightly celebrate this milestone achievement, we know there is so much more to do. Through ongoing engagements and partnerships both within and outside Shell and by keeping a laser focus on our goals, we are confident that we can make a meaningful and enduring difference, making Shell an ever more inclusive company whilst we Power Progress.
Shell wins gold for employee learning programmes in Brandon Hall Excellence Awards
Our people are our future and we place huge emphasis on growing the skills they need as we transition to become a net-zero emissions energy business, while providing the energy that people around the world need today. We are delighted that our learning programmes have been recognised by some of the world’s most prestigious learning awards.
Shell won several gold awards in Brandon Hall’s 2023 Human Capital Management (HCM) Excellence Awards. These prizes, which attract entrants from the world’s leading companies, are a resounding external validation of our commitment to invest in our people.
We won awards across 12 categories, so let’s take a look at some of our winning entries.
Building IT skills
We were awarded gold in the Best Program for Upskilling Employees category for our IT Upskilling Program. We recently rapidly expanded our Information and Digital Technology team to support the growing demand for digitalisation across the organisation. This expansion has offered great career development opportunities to existing employees, and we have been using our IT Upskilling Program to improve the skills of existing IT staff as well as to upskill new members of the team.
The IT learning programme effectively enables you to learn on the job, gaining new skills while continuing to do critical work. The programme was based on the latest adult learning best practices and included a broad scope of learning. Since we launched, we have continuously ramped up the range of topics offered and the number of participants.
And the results? Between September 2021 and December 2022, nearly 4,000 people took part, and the training contributed to a 36% improvement in skills proficiency – an increase from a single initiative that is unprecedented in our IT organisation. The learning has generated highly positive feedback, with an overall learner satisfaction of 4.4 on a scale of 5.
Developing leadership skills
Shell was awarded gold in the Best Advance in Leadership Development category for our LEAD for Team Leaders programme. Our focus was on achieving real behaviour change through a personalised learning initiative.
The approach we took was to bring in external business and psychology experts to develop a 12-15 week learning journey. Participants could select specific skills relevant to their career, including topics such as ‘How do I offer performance feedback?’ and ‘How do I build accountability into delivery?’, and their learning journey would be tailored to focus on these skills. More than a thousand team leaders across Shell have so far embarked on the programme, and there have been significant improvements in employee engagement and team leadership scores.
Our leadership learning is providing practical, transferable skills – ones which will benefit the leaders’ entire future career journey.
Energy transition preparation
Shell also won a gold award for Best Learning Program Supporting a Change Transformation Business Strategy with its Shell Energy Transition Program to Support Powering Progress. At Shell, you can be a part of the future of energy and this programme was offered to employees to help enhance awareness of the work the company is doing to become a net-zero emissions business as well as to deliver the specific skills required to be part of the future of energy.
The learning programme approached this by helping participants learn more about the energy transition and enabling them to build on foundational skills important in energy areas, as well as technical skills needed for particular roles in the Shell Renewables and Energy Solutions business.
One of our innovations in this area was to combine learning programmes with internal communications to raise awareness of the energy transition and build understanding across the organisation.
We are pleased to have received these prestigious Brandon Hall awards for our innovative learning programmes, but ultimately it is not about winning awards.
Building the skills and understanding of our people is critical to our future and we test our programmes to ensure they continue to deliver strong results. We have received that important validation, and today we continue to deliver high-quality learning programmes as part of a true learning culture.