Women remain hugely under-represented in industry, making up just 25% of the UK manufacturing workforce and 16% of engineers. So, what can businesses do to broaden the appeal of industrial careers to a wider demographic?
The UK continues to face unprecedented challenges in meeting the demand for skilled workers across several industries. Manufacturing and engineering have been particularly impacted, with almost every company citing difficulties around hiring and retaining talent.
Long-standing challenges like an aging workforce and outdated perceptions of careers in industry have been compounded by Brexit, Covid, digitalisation and changing attitudes to work.
The extent of the issue is reflected in the government’s Shortage Occupation List. Out of the 31 job types listed, more than a quarter (26%) are related to engineering. Other STEM-related occupations, including scientists, lab technicians and welders, account for a further 20%.
Women make up more than half of the labour force (53% v 47%). Attracting more of them to industry to narrow the gender gap would go a long way to alleviating current and future labour shortages. Indeed, studies show that manufacturers can close the skills gap by 50% by bringing 10% more women into industry.
Jennifer Hughes recently spoke to Made Members about her experiences and the steps her organisation has taken to promote diversity and inclusion in industry.
Telford-based Transicon Limited has been a leading player in the electrical control systems, drive systems and industrial automation sector since its establishment in 1967. The company is trusted by industrial manufacturers, processing plants and OEMs across the world to design, manufacture and install systems to manage their production processes.
The company has been trading for more than half a century and has always benefitted from a very low staff turnover. What appeared positive on the surface, however, masked an issue common in many industrial SMEs.
“When I became more actively involved in our recruitment, I realised that we had never had a female applicant for one of our technical roles, either within the design team, the engineering office, on the shop floor or within our installation team,” explained Jennifer.
“We had been missing out on so many talented candidates by only appealing to half of our local demographic.”
This realisation prompted Jennifer to introduce several small changes that have had a big impact on Transicon’s recruitment process.
Are your job ads turning women away?
One of the simplest but most powerful changes an organisation can make is to ensure the language used in job postings isn’t putting women off applying.
The language we use every day is subtly ‘coded’ as masculine or feminine, reflecting existing societal bias (often unconscious) about these genders. Words such as ‘bossy’ or ‘feisty’ for example are rarely used to describe men.
Gender-coded words can easily find their way into adverts, many as a result of tradition, explained Jennifer.
“I found that we were still using the term 'fitter wiremen' in our job descriptions and all our internal records. We've now made this 'fitter wirer' and removed gender from the job title altogether.”
Many much less obvious biases are used in job advertisements, Jennifer continued.
“Using superlative terms, such as 'expert in your field' or 'master' means you’re much less likely to result in female applicants.”
https://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/ is a useful free online tool to quickly check whether a job advert has the kind of subtle gender-coding that has this discouraging effect.
On a related note, if your job advert includes a list of skills and education requirements, research has shown that women are less likely to apply unless they feel they can comply with 100% of the list. Whereas men will apply if they feel they can broadly fulfil the requirements of the role.
“A small statement to encourage applicants to get in touch if they feel they meet most of the requirements might prevent you from missing out on talented candidates,” Jennifer suggested.
Making opportunities open to all
Jennifer closed by highlighting the importance of “being open.”
“Advertise job salaries to show transparency and make your policies such as those regarding parental leave clear from the start. There's a huge amount of currently unemployed talent that are parents who have taken time out of their careers to look after children. Let them know they're welcome to apply.
“Be open about your commitment to equality and diversity. I know it can feel like virtue signalling, but knowing an employer is committed to equality is important to many young candidates.”
An action that might not be as quick to implement but can have rewards beyond recruitment is to use technology to remove or alleviate the strain of tasks like manual handling. Transicon, for example, has applied its automation expertise to its own manufacturing processes to make them less physically taxing. New tools have sped up overall build times and reduced the risk of injury to all employees.
Following her presentation, Jennifer joined a Discussion Group with other Made Members on raising the profile of women in industry and ways to overcome the challenges involved in doing so.
Making women in industry more visible
Made Members were unanimous on the vital need to engage with schools and local communities, host open days, attend careers fairs and speak with students. Yet, engineers tend to be introverts by nature and industry desperately needs them to speak up.
This need can lead to female engineers being pushed into the spotlight, be that speaking at events, appearing in marketing videos or being photographed for websites. Not everyone will relish that level of scrutiny, especially if they are the only female engineer in a small workforce.
If the need to ‘be visible’ is making someone feel pressured, Made Members agreed that managers or mentors were the ones who should take on that pressure. If someone agrees to appear in a written or video case study, you should aim to maximise the exposure of that content rather than constantly badgering them to appear in more.
“We need female role models to be visible because it’s easier to aspire to what you can see but women in industry shouldn’t be made to feel ‘other’,” noted one Member.
Another Member raised the benefits of setting up a women’s networking group within your organisation or with other local businesses. Groups such as these are excellent ways to share experiences, raise concerns, suggest new initiatives and increase connections.
It was suggested that sessions should be periodically opened up to men as it’s important they hear and take part in the equality and diversity conversation.
People of influence
Research shows that parents are the largest single source of career advice for young people. Young people whose parents said they know what engineers do are more than twice as likely to express an interest in an engineering career than those whose parents do not (EngineeringUK).
Many female engineers grew up in engineering families. One Member noted how she spent the school holidays working in her family’s business, on the shop floor, in the warehouse and gained a real sense of what working in manufacturing entailed.
Unfortunately, beyond those with a direct connection, society’s awareness of industry remains a glaring blind spot. There is a clear need to provide parents with an accurate perception of careers in industry and their children. This applies equally to teachers, the second largest source of career advice for young people.
USEFUL RESOURCES
https://madefutures.com/ - Made Futures is a jobs board that aggregates jobs posted on the career pages of Members of Made in the Midlands and Made in Yorkshire.
A fast, FREE solution for members that allows job seekers to connect directly with employers at a much earlier stage.
“For our first fitter wirer a role advertised on Made Futures, 50% of the applicants were female,” Jennifer Hughes, Transicon Limited
https://www.madeequal.com/ - Made Equal provides a toolkit to take Member companies on a journey to inclusivity, with the goal of increasing productivity, profitability and future-proofing your workforce with a focus on mental and physical wealth.
From taking our benchmarking questionnaire, members will be offered guidance and support to improve their organisation’s diversity and inclusivity performance in the form of feedback, an expansive toolkit resource and workshop-based training.
Monthly Industry Meetups
Join your fellow business leaders and professionals to hear inspiring and thought-provoking conversations, build relationships with like-minded fellow manufacturers, and gain a clearer picture of what’s happening beyond your factory gate.
Each month, we feature three presentations from Made Members related to our core themes of Future Factories, People & Skills, Sustainable Manufacturing and Global Britain.
After the presentations, Members join an interactive virtual roundtable to exchange ideas and gain further insights on one of the presentations chosen.
*All images courtesy of This is Engineering