Manufacturing: Building a diverse team

It is important now more than ever to improve diversity in the manufacturing industry. According to research, fewer than one in three manufacturing professionals are reported as being female, despite females representing a staggering 47% of the workforce in the United Kingdom. Building a diverse workforce is particularly valuable for the industry as research states that greater diversity within an organisation ultimately improves business performance, with companies in the top quartile for diversity being 15% more able to generate higher profitability. A lack of diversity can also result in a lack of innovation as diverse perspectives and backgrounds are vital for new product and business ideas.

Keep reading as we explore the current challenges within manufacturing that have led to a lack of diversity and practical solutions on how companies can improve diversity through recruitment and training.

Why is there an issue with gender diversity in manufacturing?

There are a number of reasons why there may be diversity issues within the manufacturing industry, for example, gender stereotypes that are perpetuated. Despite women making excellent manufacturers, they are less likely to consider joining the industry as a result of the industry being stereotyped as ‘male’. Also, despite the manufacturing industry becoming far more automated and safe, women have retained the image that the work requires heavy manual labour. With an unwelcoming work environment in mind, this is unlikely to attract female candidates, resulting in a lack of diversity.

Recruitment bias can also hinder diversity in manufacturing. Studies have shown that 27% of female engineers feel they have personally experienced recruitment bias compared to only 8% of their male counterparts. Women are therefore less likely to be offered job positions or accept them if they are offered the role, creating a larger gender divide within manufacturing. With these issues in mind, it is important to consider how you can improve gender diversity.

How to build a diverse manufacturing team

Despite these issues, there are a number of steps you can take to attract and build diverse teams, such as conducting a workforce analysis, improving recruitment processes and offering increased personal development and training opportunities.

Conduct a workforce analysis

The first step to improving gender diversity is to get to know your current workforce, through any demographic data that was collected during the hiring process. In doing so, you can easily identify any diversity gaps in your workforce. After all, you cannot measure whether your initiatives are successful or not if you first don’t understand where you are now and what targets you want to achieve. Collect and analyse the current metrics on diversity recruitment, retention, promotions and turnover to understand your position and set targets for the next 6 months.

Establish recruitment strategies

The next key step is to establish diverse recruitment strategies, which actively target female candidates. If you have not ran a similar recruitment strategy in the past, it can be helpful to partner with organisations focused on diverse talent to widen your application pool. Recruiters and hiring managers should consider long-standing biases they may have during the recruitment process and aim to remove these. Research suggests that improving recruitment strategies, and hiring more women as a result, could result in more women applying for job roles, as 80% of female job applicants say workplace diversity matters when considering job offers.

Offer development programmes

Another way you can improve the retention of women in your manufacturing company is by offering training and development programmes. According to a study by Deloitte, 60% of women surveyed said they aim for senior management and other leadership positions. Therefore manufacturing companies should provide opportunities for upward mobility and professional development to improve workforce diversity.

By providing these opportunities, you should be able to attract more female employees, as statistics show that women currently hold just 29% of manufacturing leadership positions.