You cannot escape the lack of overall diversity within the engineering sector. You just need to look around the room at an industry event to know that there just aren’t enough women working within our organisations. When you combine the diversity issues with the broadening skills gap you’ve got a recipe for disaster in a time when there’s never been more demand for engineering expertise.
I know lots of businesses will have a strategy and initiatives to help change this story. For instance, at Amey, we’ve introduced a networking and mentoring programme for women. We’ve got training programmes and STEM ambassadors and school outreach plans and returner programmes – the list goes on and on.
But, what is absolutely crucial to the success of all these initiatives is ensuring that as a business we don’t expect that getting more women into engineering is a ‘woman’ thing; it’s a people thing. To make this work, to really make a difference to our industry, we ALL need to be pulling in the same direction and making this`our thing’.
That’s why I’m passionate about supporting campaigns like International Women in Engineering Day to attract new talent into out sector and make sure we leave a sustainable and diverse workforce capable of dealing with the engineering and social challenges that our customers, our clients and our stakeholders will encounter in the future – whatever it holds.