Women Are The Key To Filling Skills Gaps
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by Roisin Woolnough
The Equal Opportunities Commission has identified a major source of skills that can help out the construction, engineering and IT sectors - women.
Employers in the construction, engineering, IT and plumbing industries need to recruit more women if they are to overcome critical skills shortages. Likewise, the childcare industry needs to attract more men to plug its skills gap. To do this, these industries will need to improve their recruitment and retention practices and address their image problems with the next generation of workers.
So says the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) following the first phase of its investigation, Plugging Britain's skills gap: challenging gender segregation in training and work.
Caroline Slowcock, chief executive at the EOC, says HR professionals in these industries need to ensure their recruitment, retention and equal opportunity policies provide the right culture and image. She also believes it is important for women in male-dominated industries to have strong female role models when they enter the profession.
"Mentoring is very useful for this if you have women in your company already," she said.
