On International Women’s Day 2021, Grotech Production Ltd’s MD Martin Usher reflects on why his company is choosing to challenge.
THE contract chemical manufacturing industry is typically male dominated. The very nature of the business – lots of heavy lifting, working with often cumbersome production equipment and some truly smelly chemicals in a dusty environment – tends to appeal more to men than women but in that I think we are missing a trick.
This year’s International Women’s Day is about choosing to challenge because from challenge comes change. It’s about calling out gender bias and inequality and celebrating women’s achievements in order to forge a more inclusive world.
At Grotech Production Ltd (GPL) we do have women on our team. Some 25% of our employees are female and we have some very capable women in leading roles such as our production manager, our digital manager and our office manager. We have also recently appointed a woman to our lab team which previously has been an all-male domain although by accident rather than design. In the past we have benefitted from a woman engineering apprentice and a chemical engineering vacation student.
I’d like to say we’re doing our best but, to be honest, we could do better.
Having a more diverse and gender equal workforce would bring a new dimension to the company. Women have a different outlook and contribute an alternative perspective and this, I believe, would help GPL to develop and grow.
This International Women’s Day, we at GPL are choosing to challenge ourselves to create a more inclusive environment:
- We will seek ways of overcoming traditional barriers to more women working with us on the shopfloor such as by using technology and new equipment to take the load out of manual handling. Our new palletiser represents a step in that direction.
- We will encourage our female workers as much as our male to take on more responsibility and I am delighted that one of our women production operators is currently being trained to take on a team leader role.
- We will actively look for gender equality when recruiting our apprentices. We once had a highly talented female engineering apprentice who went on to great things at Siemens. When we recruit another engineering apprentice this autumn, I would love it if the best person for that role was female.
There is much to aim for and to achieve in terms of making GPL a more gender equal, inclusive place to work but I for one am putting up my hand, choosing to challenge and saying ‘I’m in’! Are you?
