Women in Engineering at Variohm

You may remember back in January 2017 we wrote a story about how many women we had working in our engineering and production department.

Here is a catch up on how things have changed over the past 18 months.

Last year we were pleased to be able to say that we were going against the grain, with the number of women working in engineering totalled just 9% throughout the UK, we had a work force made up of roughly 29% women. Over the past 18 months our production department has grown and women now make up more than 50% - a fantastic improvement on an already great statistic.

Some women may be put off by being in the minority in the work place but that is not the case here – not only do we have a great team made up of over 50% women but 2 of our managerial positions are currently filled by women. We think it’s great to see so many women working in this department as it tends to be so male dominated. 

Why do Women want to work in our Engineering Department?

The women in our engineering section primarily work on the production side. Our production department has been growing over the past few years which means we have been constantly recruiting since 2014.

Being close to Towcester has helped with our recruitment. It is common for women to want to work closer to the home to look after family life, many of our female employees live in Towcester and it is very convenient for them to work here.

Women in our Engineering Department

Our production manager is female; Emma Band, she has been working with us for nearly 10 years and seen the company evolve. Having a female manager is great for the female employees, it enforces that we are different from many engineering companies and we really value women in engineering.

Emma says “Ladies tend to find the fine/dexterous work we do here suited to their finer hands. I hate to say it but women are better at multi-tasking”

We like to make sure that our team is well equipped to build sensors to top quality so all of our production employees are certified to IPC standards. If customers asked for particular requirements to be met we will often train some members of the team to ensure that the standards can be met and it gives our team more experience under their belts. For example, one of our customers required our technicians to be trained on IPC WHMA-A-620 requirements and acceptance, for this, our team had to complete a 3 day training course and an exam, this training will expire after 2 years but we will keep our team up to date to ensure our work is to a high standard. We find training whilst working to be really beneficial; some members of our team have completed NVQs whilst working with us and we would like to offer more if the correct course comes up.  

Meet our Female Engineers

Our Engineering production ladies are;

Emma Band – Production Manager / Quality Inspector / Technician

Ewelina Podleska – Production Supervisor  / Quality Inspector / Technician

Sue Lange – Technician / VLP Specialist / VLP Quality Inspector

Jodie Josephs – Technician / Quality Inspector

Cathy Pilsbury – Technician / VLP Specialist

Vicki Dawson – Technician

Kelly Cross – Technician

Kim Chapman – Technician

Nicola Smith – Technician

Atiya Mirza – Brake Transducer Specialist

It’s great to see so many women working within the engineering sections of our company. To know that we are breaking the mould when it comes to stereotypical engineering companies is very rewarding. We hope that we can encourage more women to join our company and pursue their career goals.