Industry bodies are working together to bring more women into engineering and entice women engineers lost to the profession after career breaks back into the fold
It is well known that there is a significant gender gap within engineering, and the professional bodies have invested a considerable amount of time and effort into improving diversity in the profession.
However, while most of these efforts are focused on trying to encourage young women to enter the profession at the start of their careers, much less attention is paid to trying to entice them back into the industry after having children.
According to research by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), there are approximately 20,000 skilled engineers who have left the profession, and now find that they cannot get back in again.
Tapping into this lost talent pool could help companies tackle some of their skills shortages, while improving diversity within the profession.
Now a growing number of industry bodies are investigating ways to seek out these lost engineers, and offer them a path back into the profession.
The Institute of Marine, Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST), for example, has launched a return-to-work programme for professionals who have taken a career break, or are looking to transfer to a different sector.
The programme, known as STEM Returners, was developed alongside WES, and involves a 13-week paid employment placement at one of a number of partner companies.
Many returners have been out of the industry for between one to 10 years, which can have a significant impact on their confidence, according to Natalie Desty, director of workforce development at IMarEST.
“Returners tend to undervalue their skills and experience, and expect to come in at a much less senior role than they would have been in when they left,” said Desty.
But even those who do apply for a role can often be overlooked by recruitment agencies who will not put candidates forward for a role if they have a gap in their CV, as this is often equated with a deterioration in skills.
What’s more, with so much of the recruitment process now carried out online using artificial intelligence, many CVs will be discounted by such systems before they ever reach a hiring manager, said Desty.
“If you then add to that any unconscious bias by the hiring manager against those with a CV gap of two or three years or more, believing that the person’s skills aren’t up to date, then more often than not they are discounted straightaway,” she said.
Alongside the experience gained from a 13-week work placement, the programme is designed to offer the returners support such as confidence building, training, career coaching, networking opportunities and peer support.
At the end of the programme, if both the employer and returners are happy, all those going through the placement are matched with an existing job vacancy within the company. In this way the placement also acts as a 13-week job interview for the employer, while allowing the engineer to really get to know the company before joining.
In January the first 10 returners will begin their placement with the programme’s pilot partner, construction company Kier, where they will be working in different areas of the business.
Around seven other partner organisations are also expected to begin placements between January and April.
“I would say we are probably looking to get 60-70 people placed within the next six months, and that is obviously just with the companies that are currently signed up to run the programme,” said Desty.
Similarly, Equate Scotland, which aims to redress the gender imbalance in STEM sectors in the country, has also established its own returners programme. Following a successful pilot in 2016, the organisation, in partnership with the trade union Prospect and with funding from the Scottish government, launched the programme in May 2017.
Three women began paid placements in July and August; two with Scottish Power and one with EDF Energy, with a further two Scottish Power placements beginning in October.
The programme gives women structured support to brush up their skills and rebuild their confidence. Participants receive a range of support services, including workshops, webinars, networking events, one-to-one career clinics and online support.
Similarly, the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) is partnering with a number of engineering firms, including Morgan Sindall, to offer paid work placements for professionals returning to work after a career break.
The placements, called returnships – an initiative first developed in the financial industry by Goldman Sachs in 2008 – offer 10-12 week contracts in which the participants work on one of the company’s projects while gaining the opportunity to refresh their skills.
For those who are already planning to return to work for their company after a period of maternity leave, WISE offers a two-day returners programme in partnership with Skills 4. Companies taking part in the programme, which has been running for 10 years, include lead host Atkins, as well as HS2, BAM Nutall, BuroHappold, UCL, Cardiff University, Westfield and Mott MacDonald, said Jayne Little, managing director at Skills 4.
“There is some good work going on,” she said. “However, if the UK is going to meet its aspirations of a more diverse workforce in certain industries and boardrooms, many public and private sectors must do more if talented people are to advance their careers and stay in industries, which can ill-afford a brain drain.”
For Kier, which is taking part in IMarEST’s returner programme, the scheme will allow it to offer an alternative route into the company, said Jan Atkinson, talent and organisational development director.
“We undertake a lot of targeted activity when recruiting for apprentices, graduates and early talent, and wanted to diversify our entry routes into Kier,” Atkinson said.
The programme will provide a way for skilled professionals to get back in to work more easily, or make the switch into the built environment sector, while offering a personalised plan and mentoring scheme to help make the transition a successful one, she said.
“Our sector has a well-publicised skills shortage in technical and professional skills and a diversity challenge,” said Atkinson. “So we need to make the pathway into Kier accessible and attractive to talented professionals at any stage in their career journey, and provide them with the right support, particularly at times when the transition might feel a little harder to achieve.”
Great ideas and very important topic as wastage of the UK’s talent is tragic.
We need to emulate the other professions where women are effectively encouraged to return to their work. Engineering needs to set-aside its macho image (mainly the heavy site-work image), and look at what is really needed in professional engineers: it ought to be a great profession to return to, and if it is not the causes need to be removed.
Thanks for reporting on this! Check out the Society of Women Engineers/iRelaunch STEM Re-entry Task Force in the U.S. – 18 global companies are introducing, implementing and expanding paid reentry internship programs for returning technical professionals, and over 200 “relaunchers” have participated since inception. 60% to 100% are getting hired at the conclusion of their respective programs. reentry.swe.org — Carol Fishman Cohen, CEO, iRelaunch, Co-lead, STEM Re-entry Task Force
When will people wake up to the fact that “efforts to encourage young women” back to ??? discriminate on several levels.
We need to encourage anyone who has ability and potential irrespective of their gender, age or anything else.
The need to attract everyone with aptitude who wants to work in the sector is, of course, true but to put it in those terms is misguided. Women being underrepresented and not returning to work after having children is a real problem and needs addressing, and to say it’s discriminatory is ludicrous.
If by underrepresented you mean that there are fewer women than men in Engineering then no one can argue with that.
The big question is why are there fewer women in Engineering ?.
Is it because women with ability and the desire to work in engineering are being discriminated against and turned away or is it for the same reason that there are so few men in HR departments ?
Giving people preferential employment opportunities on the basis of gender, age, race etc. etc is discrimination and is illegal in this country.
Just need to make sure that any women who do return are paid exactly the same as male colleagues doing the same work. Failure here might well result in negative publicity the engineering profession can well do without.
Wish the same scheme exited for other scientific professions…like Physics lecturer / researcher.
It’s no surprise that the UK throws away its talent. Universities don’t help as they know practically nothing about real life. Too many companies are bad at recruiting the right people – experience does not and never will equate to natural ability. Women might provide the profession with a different point if view on things.
V pleased to read Carol Fishman Cohen’s comment about advances in the USA. We may not like what we are told? about practices within former Communist States, but one area where those societies do lead is in the encouragement of women into the whole embrace of technology. And now of course there are several generations of women who have followed their mothers into such. The initial impetus was of course WWII. The loss of 20,000,000+ young men required the need for women to take-over traditional male roles. My links and associates there confirm that this is seen as an advantage. Young women technology trained persons bring a new perspective.
As Mike notes so well above, other countries have used the wartime use of women workers to their long-term benefit. The UK’s approach after the war was to create employment for the men returning home, so that we have not kept the tradition of women in industrial work up well.
I believe that the root cause of our problems is the social antipathy to numeracy, encouraged by our non-numerate governments unfortunately. The spread of A-level results reflects the sad fact that females are dominating the passes in the humanities and social subjects but in the technical realm, only in chemistry and biology of the sciences do they outperform male students.
It will need some massive positive biases to reverse generations of conditioning and change the thinking of parents and schools regarding numeracy. Bringing back technical colleges and following the German approach to technical universities might help.
Following on from views expressed above: fellow bloggers might find some value in knowing that one young lady [Dr Ekaterina Bakhtina] who I first met when she was on secondment from the technical University in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) to Leeds Uni some 20 years ago did, for her Doctorate, a detailed study of the alteration(s) necessary to fulfil the present Russian legal requirement that young women may take any roles in military and civilian services. Obviously their strength and dimensions are NOT the same as young males: but this alone was and is no reason for them not to apply and be considered after suitable training for full-time service. Their uniforms, protective equipment, [ballistic, NBC, flame and weather] have all been modified-following differences necessary defined by Katerina’s work. Interestingly she now works as a pattern-cutter with an haut couture fashion House -taking the arty designs to clothe the WAGs of Oligarchs and turning them into garments that can actually be made! As she says, it is sheet-metal design with an added dimension: that the base material can be stretched! I did arrange for her to visit our own Defence Clothing and Textile development facilities. [Colchester and Bicester] Knowledge of and ability in this area is directly transferable across all political divides.
Civilian service staff are just as likely to be maimed or killed in a fire or collapsed building anywhere.