Level the playing field

Viva’s gender equality strategy

VIVA Energy is on track to have women fill half of its senior leadership positions as part of a strategy to develop a more diverse workforce.

But CEO Scott Wyatt said there was much work to be done, particularly at an operation level where 93 per cent of staff were men.

“We need to make progress far more quickly than we have, particularly on the gender front,” Mr Wyatt said.

“Right across industry, and businesses in general, this has been way too slow; it has been glacial in the progress that has been made.”

Mr Wyatt discussed the company’s strategy to achieve more gender equality in the workplace at a Geelong Manufacturing Council forum last week.

He said Viva, which owns the Geelong refinery, needed to pursue diversity as a business requirement to bring new skills and ideas into the company.

“Being a traditional hydrocarbon business, we really need to disrupt our own business model, as to how we can we do things differently, what future revenue streams are available to us, how we can build on the DNA or the skills we have in the company and progress into new markets,” he said.

He said it would be the company’s people, not necessarily its assets, which would be the key to future success.

“How we get the right people to join our company and create the most diverse company that we possibly can, and bring new skills and new ideas into the organisation, that ultimately will make us more successful than our competitors,” Mr Wyatt said.

“That is where the core desire to improve the diversity of the company has come from.”

The average age of Viva Energy’s 1200 workers is 46 years and they are predominantly white Anglo Saxon men, he said.

A goal to have equal representation of women in the executive team and the senior leadership group — the top 30 or 40 positions in the company — was ahead of its 2020 target.

“I think we will achieve that by the end of this year,” Mr Wyatt said. “Across all levels of management, (a goal to lift representation) from 30 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020, that is progressing quite well.

“When you get down to middle managers, the gaps start to become more