Creating Workplaces Where Voices Are Heard
Joule and Monark recently convened HR and People Leaders from across the energy sector for a roundtable discussion on a question that is becoming harder to ignore:
If more organizations say they want women to rise into leadership, what actually needs to change inside the workplace to make that possible?
What emerged was not a conversation about intention alone.
It was a conversation about systems.
About what women experience day to day.
About where advancement stalls.
About whether leadership is being built with enough rigour, clarity, and consistency to support different people through different stages of life and work.
And about whether companies are listening closely enough to see where the real friction points are.
Why This Matters
Women remain underrepresented in energy leadership.
Across U.S. and Canadian power and utilities:
~ 16% of C-suite roles
~ 22% of executive roles
~ 27% of board seats.
In Western Canada, women represent 21.4% of the energy labour force, compared with 46.9% of the broader labour force.
At the same time, the business case continues to strengthen: Organizations with more gender-diverse leadership teams consistently outperform their peers.
Drawing on Monark’s organizational health data across the energy sector, one insight stood out:
If women are entering the sector but not advancing, it’s rarely just a pipeline issue - it’s a signal about the health of the organization itself.
It reflects in how leadership is experienced, how opportunity is distributed, whether communication is clear, whether sponsorship is real, and whether pathways into leadership feel fair and visible.
SIX Signals to Watch (Where Systems Are Breaking Down)
1. The Retention Gap
Women are entering the sector - but not always staying or advancing.
“I can keep advocating for more women to enter the sector… but if it’s just leaking out the bottom, what the heck am I doing here?”
Representation is the starting point.
Progression is the real test.
2. The Communication Gap
Across Monark’s organizational health data from 40+ energy companies over 12 years, from thousands of responses, women report:
Higher connection to purpose
Lower satisfaction with communication
This showed up in the room as:
Weak or inconsistent career conversations
Limited visibility into opportunities
Lack of clarity on how to grow
“Everyone’s building programs—but what’s actually missing are real development conversations.”
3. The Manager Bottleneck
Again and again, the conversation returned to middle management as a critical pressure point.
“This gets stuck in middle management.”
“We’re promoting technical experts—but not necessarily people leaders.”
When managers aren’t equipped to lead:
Career conversations stall
Sponsorship becomes inconsistent
Advancement depends too heavily on the individual leader
4. The Leadership Value Gap
Participants also discussed a less visible challenge: not all stalled progression reflects a lack of opportunity. In many cases, women have access to development, sponsorship, and advancement pathways, but make intentional decisions about whether leadership roles are worth the personal and professional trade-offs.
Long hours, constant availability, and the growing complexity of leadership can influence whether senior roles feel attractive or sustainable. The question becomes not only how organizations help women advance, but how they design leadership roles and support systems that make advancement feel sustainable and worthwhile.
5. The Program-to-Practice Gap
Most organizations don’t lack programs. They have Women-focused ERGs, Leadership Development, and flexibility policies.
The challenge is whether those efforts are changing what people actually experience.
Several participants described a disconnect between what exists on paper and what shapes advancement in practice.
“Sometimes it feels like, well, we built a program for that and I’m like, great. But nobody uses it.”
The signal to watch is whether inclusion lives in everyday systems — not just in standalone initiatives.
6. The Voice Gap
In energy, not all work environments are the same.
Field, site, camp, and project-based environments operate under different constraints and cultural realities than corporate teams.
“Head office can miss those nuances sometimes if we don’t get those voices.”
If those voices are missing or underweighted, leaders may be acting on an incomplete picture.
six Areas to Focus
1. Measure Advancement, Not Just Representation
Move beyond headcount.
Track:
Who is progressing
Who is stalling
Where people are leaving
“Literally measuring—how many women are advancing?”
This is where patterns—and real problems—become visible.
2. Build Stronger Managers
Much of the employee experience is shaped in everyday leadership moments:
Career conversations
Feedback
Sponsorship
Workload management
Research suggests nearly half of the experience of inclusion is driven by manager behavior.
This is one of the highest-leverage opportunities.
3. Strengthen Communication and Sponsorship Systems
This isn’t about more communication—it’s about better communication:
Clear
Consistent
Connected to opportunity
Some organizations are moving toward:
Formal sponsorship (not just mentorship)
Leaders accountable for advancement
Transparent sharing of engagement data and actions
4. Listen More Deeply Across the Workforce
Better insight requires better listening.
Leading practices emerging from the discussion included:
Segmenting data beyond head office
Using different tools for field teams (e.g. QR-based surveys, site-specific listening)
Asking context-specific questions
The goal: A more complete, more accurate view of the organization.
5. Create More Practical Peer Learning
One of the strongest signals from the room wasn’t just about problems—it was about appetite.
There is real demand for:
Sharing what’s actually working
Learning across organizations
Moving beyond theory into practice
6. Reimagine What Leadership Looks Like
Organizations should examine not only who advances, but whether leadership roles are designed in ways that people want to step into. This includes:
Sustainable workloads
Greater flexibility in career progression
Clearer visibility into the benefits of leadership
Role models who demonstrate different paths to success
Advancement should feel achievable, but it should also feel worthwhile.
Where This Lands
The most important takeaway from the discussion was this:
Women’s advancement is not a standalone diversity issue.
It’s a leading indicator of organizational health.
And in some cases, the question isn’t just how do we help people advance, but how do we design leadership roles that people actually want to step into?
When systems are strong, people stay, grow, and step into leadership.
When they’re not, the gaps show up early—and often more visibly.
What Comes Next
What made this conversation different was how quickly it moved from aspiration to action.
The focus wasn’t just on what’s wrong—but on:
What to measure differently
Where to invest
What to fix first
How to build systems that actually support progression
And how to make leadership pathways more sustainable, flexible, and attractive for different career goals and life stages
Joule and Monark will continue to convene conversations like this, bringing leaders together to combine data, lived experience, and practical insight, and to build a more connected and actionable community of practice across the energy sector.
Because the organizations that move first won't just be better at supporting women. They'll be better at designing workplaces where people can see multiple paths to success, where advancement feels both achievable and worthwhile, and where leadership is compatible with the realities of modern work and life.
The future of energy will be shaped, in part, by the workplaces we build now, and by whether more women can see leadership not only as a path that is open to them, but as one worth choosing.
