Traditionally manufacturing did little to encourage women to join the workforce and entrenched views meant that many production and manufacturing jobs were considered ‘man’s work’.

A combination of legislation, more enlightened management attitudes and a realisation that these outmoded views result in organisations excluding around 50% of their potential workforce have acted as a catalyst for change. Today, those companies that proactively address issues around diversity in the workplace in the manufacturing industry are reaping the benefits. 

However, while significant steps have already been taken, more needs to be done to promote greater diversity and change working practices to the benefit of both female and male workers. We need to undertake a number of actions to achieve this.

Talk
Talk openly talk about the situation with employees and explore how to change the environment to ensure it is inclusive. In order to achieve this, the entire company must demonstrate a tangible wish to move forward in its attitudes and actions and to recognise how everyone in the organisation will benefit as a result.

Ultimately recruiting the best people, regardless of gender, race, religion or sexuality, and creating a safe work environment that encourages and rewards hard work and success has to be the key consideration. Ensuring staff understand the challenges and the opportunities facing the company and their role within this and that there is a link between their efforts and their reward is critical.

Engage
Ensure that you engage employees and encourage them to behave in an inclusive way and create a team-based culture where all staff can work together to achieve their personal and company goals.

Support
In order to effectively integrate diversity into the workplace it's imperative that promises are followed up by actions, such as providing support to female employees during and after pregnancy, respecting religious holidays and rituals.

Promotion of diversity is an ongoing process; a short-term campaign can see old attitudes and prejudices return. Ongoing support and conversation must take place between employer and employee to ensure that the policy is working to the best of its ability. Equally, managers must be empowered to enforce the diversity policy through the disciplinary procedures if this ever becomes necessary.

Widening of the employment pool to recruit the most able employees can only benefit net income in the long run.

In our experience, encouraging and recruiting a more diverse workforce has a range of positive benefits, making the company much more flexible and responsive and encouraging a more positive organisational culture and work environment which reflects the world outside the factory gates.

Rockwool has taken a proactive stance to address workplace stereotypes and to ensure a fully diverse workforce which encourages applicants from all sectors of the community.

Following significant investment in our Bridgend manufacturing facility, we created 100 new roles. We wanted to ensure men and women would be equally driven to apply for these jobs. To this end we held dedicated ‘ladies night’ open evenings, working with a local recruitment agency to dispel any myths around the working environment and job functions. These events were repeated after the initial evening and repeat meetings were significantly over subscribed.

Prospective employees were given a tour of the factory to ensure they witnessed first hand the inclusive environment and understood the physical and technical requirements of the job. However, we also highlighted that with modern production facilities and equipment, high levels of physical strength and activity were no longer critical and the emphasis in modern manufacturing tends to be on technical knowledge and skills and team working.

In addition, adverts were developed that would appeal to the female workforce, ensuring the visuals, tone and language utilised were appropriate to a mass audience. We ran adverts for production line jobs in the Western Mail which generated a fantastic response from applicants of both genders, ensuring the company had a wide pool of talented individuals to assess, so we could bring the most promising into the business.

A major stumbling block in the recruitment process in the past has been lack of experience. This has resulted in a cycle where women looking for a job in manufacturing are turned away due to lack of hands-on experience, yet were unable to develop this without being given a job. This created a self-perpetuating cycle that has traditionally excluded many women from the workforce. 

A fresh approach needs to reflect the different qualities that women bring to a workplace.  For example, we found the use of simple assessment centres especially useful and that female candidates could be more effective in group exercises which overcame their lack of experience or technical knowledge. This is why alternative criteria for employment, and appropriate use of psychometric testing, is becoming more and more widespread in the industry to ensure that there are no talented yet inexperienced workers who slip through the net.

Over the past decade, the industry have seen considerable amounts of money invested into developing efficient, productive equipment and it would be imprudent for companies not to back this up by employing the most efficient, productive staff possible.

With this in mind, many manufacturing companies are encouraging employee feedback on production line working conditions and equipment. If staff report that specific items of machinery are difficult to operate or physically exclude any workers then the equipment will be redesigned of refurbished to suit the workforce, rather than the workforce selected to meet the needs of the machine.

In a modern working environment no employer can risk their employee sustaining an injury and health and safety is critical. By combining cutting-edge machinery with progressive working attitudes, companies can lay a firm foundation for growth both commercially and in terms of the working environment.