Powerful Women at SSE: Nikki

I’m Nikki and I joined SSE over three years ago. I began my career early on with my own business, followed by the Marks and Spencer management training programme. I then stayed in retail with a background that includes telco, digital, and energy organisations, all of them working in customer facing roles.

I was initially attracted to the energy sector, in particular low carbon solutions, about 10 years ago. Then about three and a half years ago, I had the opportunity to have a conversation about SSE and what SSE were doing. For me, I’d made a decision that I wasn’t going to work for a company that wasn’t standing behind their values. I wasn’t going to work for a company that wasn’t living and breathing their own external strategy, so I researched SSE pretty carefully.  When it came down to it, I knew that SSE was a company that I wanted to work for because I felt our values were aligned. The ultimate ambition of getting to net zero was one that they were standing fully behind.

My role is split broadly into 3 areas: setting the customer businesses strategy to deliver our broader SSE net zero ambitions, ensuring we nurture our talent and enrich our culture and, of course, managing delivery and performance. The thing I enjoy most about my role is the variety. No two days are the same. It could be working with customers on their net zero plans, representing SSE with government and regulatory bodies in discussions on energy policy to working with a range of partners and team members as we create new solutions to bring to market. A whole range of factors come into my day, and I think that variability is what really appeals to me.

SSE is a straightforward company, the focus is on capability, attitude, and outputs. There are a whole host of opportunities for individuals who bring their values to work and work collaboratively with others.

We know that net zero is going to take a huge amount of diversity of thought to get to the end result. It’s so important for individuals to feel comfortable and able to bring their true self to work or you risk stifling their development. One of the things that I’m super proud of at SSE is that we have a range of belonging groups where colleagues meet to really support each other through a whole range of areas. SSE is a company that focusses on values backed up by an increasing range of HR policies to support all of us at various stages of our lives.

Engineering is one area in particular where I think we are lacking in gender diversity, not only in SSE but across the country as a whole. I feel really proud that at SSE there are a variety of schemes and routes you can take to progress your career such as apprenticeships, graduate, programmes and post-graduate opportunities.

At SSE, we are very active in supporting inclusion and diversity from the top of the organisation right through to our teams. Working at SSE, I don’t think of myself as a female senior leader, I think of myself as a senior leader. What that shows is that I am included, I am embraced, as Nikki. I am welcomed in terms of the skillsets that I bring, rather than any doors being closed on me because I’m a female. For me, working at SSE is about what you bring to the party, not whether you’re male or female.

I genuinely believe that getting to net zero is one of our biggest, if the not the biggest, global challenge that we’re facing. So, if you’re somebody who’s curious about that challenge, feels passionate about that challenge and wants to be part of a team to actually work through how we get there over the coming years then it is really worth checking out SSE because there is a role for everyone.