Our people, our identity

The waste management industry staffing, leadership and management lacks diversity across the board and is underrepresented of women and ethnically diverse people. We recognise that, while we have made some progress in recent years, Dennis Eagle still has a long way to go.

The challenge going forward, is for us to promote equality, tackle discrimination and foster positive relationships between diverse groups of people.

Our commitment is to take positive steps to be an inclusive organisation and to diversify our workforce.

Diversity and inclusivity Education

In 2021, we started a programme of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) training, starting with our management team and progressing to teams across the organisation. By the end of 2021, 150 employees had undergone this training and it has been rolled out for the rest of the workforce to be trained in 2022/2023.

EDI audits

We began to implement EDI audits in 2021 to help us understand the demographics and culture of our workforce and to identify factors that will specifically help us reach our goals. This soon highlighted the fundamental need to collect equal opportunities data.

It has also led to site accessibility improvements in 2021. We are currently preparing to join the Disability Confident scheme as a Committed employer.

Gender positive recruitment

We take on apprentices every year to support our future talent pipeline. Our partner colleges have been asked not to provide male-only shortlists and we have successfully welcomed female technical apprentices into the traditional male preserves of Aftermarket, Manufacturing and Engineering in the last five years as a result of this positive action.

We are also auditing the language we use in job adverts, profiles and job titles to ensure we are not using gender-biased phrases or words that may dissuade female candidates from applying for roles or promotions.

We have also implemented two flexible working policies: Flexitime and the Home Working Policy. These are, in part, intended to attract more female candidates.

We are starting to advertise roles with home working options and flexible hours from the outset of employment to attract candidates who need to work flexibly around personal commitments.

Gender Pay Gap Figures

Engineering and manufacturing have traditionally been a male dominated occupations and this is reflected at Dennis Eagle where only 12% of our workforce are female. We have more men in senior positions and women are underrepresented in many departments. This has led to a gender pay gap. More detail and the actions we are taking to address this issue can be found on our website.