At a recent NZAGE Forum event, members heard from Caleb Jasmat, Early Careers Lead at Contact Energy, about the organisation’s approach to diversity and inclusion in early careers.

Contact Energy won the 2025 NZAGE Award for Best Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. Caleb shared the work behind the award, including the workforce challenges Contact identified, the changes it made to its early careers strategy and the results achieved so far.

The Challenge: A Shrinking Talent Pipeline

When Caleb joined Contact in 2022, the organisation was facing a number of workforce challenges. Its generation and trading workforce was ageing and predominantly male, while the domestic talent pipeline was shrinking.

Around 20% of the workforce was over 60, and 80% of the generation and trading workforce was male. Participation in relevant engineering pathways was also low among women, Māori and Pacific peoples.

For Contact, this was not simply a diversity target. It was a workforce planning issue, with implications for the organisation’s future capability and its ability to continue operating effectively.

The response was to change the way early careers was viewed within the organisation. Rather than treating it as a series of recruitment activities, Contact began to approach early careers as a long-term talent pipeline.

Building Pathways into the Organisation

Contact created a dedicated role to lead its early careers strategy and established clearer pathways through graduate programmes, internships and apprenticeships.

The graduate programme was redesigned with a centralised budget, allowing the focus to shift towards development and providing graduates with a broader range of experiences across the organisation. Graduates receive permanent offers from the outset, reflecting Contact’s approach to early talent as part of its longer-term workforce.

Internships provide students with practical experience, exposure to the energy sector and the opportunity to build professional networks. Apprenticeships have also expanded beyond traditional school-leaver pathways, with career changers bringing transferable skills and different experiences into the organisation.

Contact also invested in targeted university engagement, storytelling and partnerships designed to increase awareness of the energy sector and broaden the talent pool.

Improving the Selection Experience

The selection process was redesigned with candidate experience in mind. A bespoke assessment centre website provided candidates with information about the process, agenda, dress expectations, assessors and advice from current graduates.

Contact also invested in building capability among leaders and assessors. Unconscious bias training is compulsory for assessment centre participants, helping leaders recognise how biases may influence selection decisions.

The results include a 315% increase in applications and an increase in female representation across graduate cohorts. In the most recent intake discussed, nine of 11 hires were female.

Caleb also described a change in internal conversations. Diversity is now more consistently considered as part of the selection process, rather than requiring repeated intervention from the early careers team.

Takeaways for NZAGE Members

Contact’s experience highlighted several areas for organisations to consider when reviewing their own early careers strategies:

• Give someone dedicated responsibility. A clear owner is important if early careers is expected to deliver against wider workforce objectives.
• Set measurable goals. Clear targets provide a basis for reviewing progress and working backwards to identify changes needed across the recruitment process.
• Think about the pipeline, not just the recruitment event. Graduate recruitment is one pathway into an organisation. Internships, apprenticeships, career changers and other pathways can also contribute to future workforce capability.
• Assess for potential. Early careers recruitment provides an opportunity to assess potential and capability, rather than relying on previous experience.
• Invest in people leaders. The programme is only one part of the experience. The leaders and teams supporting early talent play an important role in development and retention.

Contact is continuing to review its early careers strategy, including Māori and Pacific pathways, professional development, future workforce capability needs and non-tertiary pathways.

NZAGE members can watch the recording of this Forum event through the NZAGE members-only YouTube playlist. The link is included in all NZAGE newsletters.

The next NZAGE Forum event takes place on 12th August, with Talent Solutions and Eagle Technology, winners of the 2025 NZAGE Award for Best Partnership. Be sure to mark your calendars!