Kerry Dryburgh, three years on

The scope of the role that I have today has evolved over the course of the last two or three years, from what some people would think of as the traditional People role or HR role in terms of the employee lifecycle, to one that's more reflective of the employee experience. [Now] I also have responsibility, as an example, for workplace environments, all of the real estate in our company, for the health and well-being of our employees as well as transformation across the bp organisation.

Then 12 months or so ago we also integrated communications, both internal and external communications, and again for me this was the final piece in the experience jigsaw. It's something that I have a real passion for and opinions around how we can do this well.

Keeping the internal and the external parts of communications together is important because you need to ensure that those sets of messages match and that your employees are connected to what's being said externally as well. So there's, I think, real logic. And certainly from a personal perspective it gives me stretch and development and the opportunity to think more broadly.

It's been really useful and I think as we've talked about this in partnership over the course of the last three-four years it's helped us to crystallise that maybe some of the things that we had already been thinking are actually really good practice and systematic good practice because we know that Chief Executives of the future need a variety of experiences, and for different organisations they will be slightly different, For us it's been about ensuring that individuals have operational experiences across the breadth of our energy organisation and it's also about leadership and growing leadership of larger and larger organisations. So I think the partnership with 25x25 has really helped us just to crystallise what that means for us in bp.

I think it's brilliant to see the way that 25x25 has grown and how much impact it's had, across not just the FTSE because as an organisation you're looking more broadly than that. And I think it has brought to everyone's attention the fundamental question about diversity of Chief Executives around the world and where those individuals come from. Particularly from a gender standpoint and the importance of building a talent pipeline because we also know that female Chief Executives need a more deliberate pipeline of support and development in order to be appointed to those key roles. So what I think has been great about 25x25 is really the development and the impact that you've had across so many organisations. It's normalised; it's equalised the ability to think about what needs to be done in order to diversify Chief Executives of the future.

I think there's three key themes that I would highlight. So, we've talked a bit about technology, digital, AI and the reality is you know it's changing day by day and that is impacting what we do and how we do it every single day.

I think the second piece is skills, so over the years people would have talked about career and career in a vertical sense– how do I get the next promotion, the next job, what we're really thinking now it's about how do you ensure you've got the right skills because jobs through the advent of different digital evolutions will change and the important thing is making sure you've got skills to piece that together. So regardless of whether people stay in companies, or they go do other things, regardless of whether jobs change you've got the right skills that you can piece together to have a successful career.

And then the last point of course is in the communication space. Everything is everywhere all of the time. Now everything internal is external almost at the same time and so the important thing is being clear about what messaging you need to deliver, how you deliver it, but being aware that you can't control it. Knowing what you can and can't control influences how you pull all of that together what messages you deliver and certainly I think how you shape things for the future.