11 minute read
Women in Manufacturing
Creativity and intuition: why Integra Systems believes hiring more women in manufacturing makes sense
By Margie Smithurst
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Erika Hughes, Integra Systems Commercial Director and co-owner.
As an SME at the forefront of Industry 4.0 design and manufacturing, Melbournebased Integra Systems sees itself as a prime candidate for employing women - not just as engineers in their design team, but giving them critical hands-on production experience on the assembly floor.
“Most women will aim for corporates, but I think the best development opportunities are in SMEs. In an SME, you’re made accountable for everything you do and touch, and it all has a positive or negative effect on the business. You’re at the coalface, and young women in particular like to see outcomes,“ says Erika Hughes, the company’s Commercial Director and co-owner.
As a female company leader, Hughes understands the value of having women in leadership roles and in the company’s teams, and she sat down with Industry Update to tell us more.
IU: How would you describe Integra Systems manufacturing business?
Erika Hughes: We are specialists in the development and manufacturing of light metal-based products - for example, digital displays, office and street furniture, electrical and electronics enclosures and defence products.
Our niche is high-variability, medium volume, which is unique for us. Most of our clients are looking for bespoke designs with short lead times and agile manufacturing, so they need relentless innovators, and we’re constantly reworking our approaches. We basically do design right through to delivery, and have our own manufacturing facility that specialises in sheet metal, plus a micro-economy of local manufacturers, mainly in Victoria, who we outsource to when we need their services. But it’s all locally made.
IU: You’re helped by universities in that regard, aren’t you?
IU: We know there’s an issue with attracting women to STEM study, which means that for employers looking for women, it’s a challenge. What sort of work environment has Integra Systems created to attract women?
Erika Hughes: By becoming a fully digitalised operation that’s integrated with Industry 4.0 principles, Integra Systems has made manufacturing attractive and fun. Throughout our operation we have touchscreen kiosks that provide performance inputs and outputs, as well as activity centre dashboards. So it’s a highly innovative workplace where everyone is encouraged to put forward suggestions, and to be curious and give feedback on our products and design.
That’s where we see the advantages of having women on our teams - their intuition and user insights are noticeably strong, and women have been flourishing in creative and leadership roles.
We’ve always encouraged diversity in the company, and 30 percent of our workforce is now women.
We have women in the design team as engineers and industrial designers, within sales and marketing, and women in leadership roles in the production environment as well as within the production team. In those roles, women communicate really well - their empathy and intuition can be a real asset.
From my point of view as a leader and watching the dynamics between the men and women, I’ve noticed so much more balance and better output when you don’t have an environment full of testosterone.
Plus, we are fortunate we have a fairly young team and the younger guys really appreciate working with women.
We also offer flexible working conditions, for people with young children and who need to work school hours - they can still make a huge contribution.
But while I’ve seen the transformative effect these women can have, we are still struggling to find women to hire!
Erika: Yes. We have strong relationships with the industry partner divisions in Victorian universities. Typically they’ll present me with their top students for internship programs, and where possible I’ll ask for young women. Those programs, which are for design engineers who also sometimes come on in our production teams, can lead to full-time employment with us.
All of our designers - that is, everyone who works in our engineering team - work in the manufacturing environment for a period of time. Our engineers understand that a great designer is born from knowing how things are made and put together, so we give them that opportunity.
We’ve had young female engineers come through as students working part time, and they’re happy to work in the production team while waiting for an opportunity to get into the design team. Quite a lot of young women actually express an interest in working with the machines.
The challenge is attracting and retaining the women in those positions.
We also hire unskilled women who aren’t STEM graduates who want to use their hands, and who then go on to develop an interest in STEM after working with us.
In 2021, for example, we took on a group of year 12 girls on Saturdays, and they absolutely thrived. Some of them went on to study STEM at university, which I think is because we showed them opportunities and they felt valued. It’s about setting the bar for young women’s expectations in manufacturing workplaces.
IU: How important is merit in your hiring policy?
be selected on merit. But when we’re presented with candidates, male or female, more often than not it’s the women who present well and are selected on merit. Then the dynamics, knowledge and creativity that they inject adds value to the whole team.
We are very fortunate that we’ve had some really good women to choose from.
IU: You’re a mentor of women in manufacturing too?
Erika: Yes, AMTIL (Australian Manufacturing Technology Institute Limited) asked me to be part of a new program this year which sees women in manufacturing leadership roles mentoring other women in various positions, including leadership, within the manufacturing industry.
In a relatively male-dominated environment, we work through some of the challenges for building confidence. A lot of women in manufacturing don’t do the networking they should be doing to progress their careers. It’s about overcoming that ‘imposter syndrome’, which I see a lot of. These women have the same opportunities as everyone else, but they don’t know whether they’re worthy of them or how to communicate their value proposition, so it’s about working through ‘blockages’ that are standing in their way - and often that’s to do with networking and developing relationships within the organisation.
Women engineers can typically be a bit introverted, so it’s important from a mentoring point of view to draw them out and help them get where they want to go.
Integra Systems integrasystems.com.au
No forklift licence? No problem: how global manufacturer KimberlyClark attracted more women to its Millicent Mill operations
When Kelly Thompsell started out with KimberlyClark 25 years ago as a graduate chemical engineer, very few of the company’s employees were women - either as engineers or in production roles.
That’s shifted dramatically in the last couple of years, particularly in their operations facility at Millicent Mill near the South Australia and Victoria border, which produces the company’s Kleenex and Viva tissues and toilet paper.
“There have been a lot of new hires … and many of them are women, which I’m really enjoying as I’ve spent most of my time here with 95% men,” says Thompsell.
In 2019, the company realised they’d received very few applications from women for operations roles, which led to no women being hired that year.
It turns out that one reason so few women were applying was the requirement on the job ad for a forklift licence.
Thompsell, who is now the site’s Continuous Improvement Engineer, was the person who pointed it out to
the HR team.
“I was watching my kid play hockey and one of the other ladies there, who works at a recruiting firm, was trying to get a job for a woman, but she didn’t have a forklift licence and couldn’t get one at the local training facility because she was too short and their fork truck seat didn’t go forward enough.”
Research has shown that women are more likely to only apply for roles if they meet all the criteria.
Realising the forklift licence could be excluding great candidates from applying, Thompsell challenged the criteria that Kimberly-Clark was using.
“So it was just simple things,” she says. “And that became part of a review of how the jobs were being advertised and what might be turning women away.”
Changes led to more women applicants
When Kimberly-Clark removed the prerequisite that applicants need to already hold a forklift licence to qualify for an interview, and instead ask that applicants pursue the licence if successful in the role, it made a difference.
The small but important change led to around 50% of women being hired in new production roles in 2020 and 2021.
The shift in the atmosphere at the Millicent site is already evident, says Thompsell. “To me personally, it seems more cheerful because there’s a more diverse mix.
“At the end of 2019 only 6% of the
total Mill production workforce were female, and in a few short years we have already more than doubled this, and it’s now increased to 15%.
“I feel proud of the progress to date and the commitment to continue to see this rise, especially compared with other manufacturing sites, which are still sitting on around 6%.”
With a starting salary of $81,000 a year for an unskilled operator, Thompsell says it’s a pretty good option for women, who probably don’t realise these jobs are out there.
“If you don’t want to go to uni, or take a trade route, then operations is a really good career to take up.”
One of the other things Kimberly-Clark is increasingly offering is workplace flexibility.
On the operations floor, some shifts are now shared, and it’s often the men, particularly those with young children or who are nearing retirement, who are happy to work half the time.
Attracting women to engineering
Thompsell herself has watched the situation change for engineers, too. When she took time off to have her three children, there was no talk of going back part-time. Instead her husband happily stayed home to look after the kids once her maternity leave finished.
“In an engineering role, you’re expected to be there as much as possible to be able to work on problems, but the company’s much more accepting of part-time work these days.”
“I recently had a young female engineer on the team who has had kids, who was coming back two days a week and building up to four days.”
Improving the numbers in the engineering section is still a challenge though - and that’s got a lot to do with the STEM pathway.
“Engineering requires a university degree and you have to like maths.
“I was talking to my daughter, who’s in year 12, and a lot of girls are doing the STEM subjects, but they all want to do medicine. I’m like, tell them to do engineering!”
Thompsell is passionate about getting more women into the profession and volunteers her time to encourage girls to pursue STEM careers. She participates
Kelly Thompsell - Continuous Improvement Engineer at Kimberly-Clark
in think tanks and mentoring sessions for school kids and supervises the local science and engineering challenge for young women in STEM run by the University of South Australia.
The shift in attitude in the company about hiring more women is very promising, she says.
“We’ve had some fantastic women come through, and they’re proving that anyone’s capable of doing certain jobs.
“And the men are extremely welcoming. Everyone’s accepted it’s here to stay.”
In 2022, Kimberly-Clark was recognised by the government-run Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) as an Employer of Choice for the very first time. The Gender Equality (EOCGE) citation is a voluntary leading practice recognition program designed to encourage, recognise and promote organisations’ active commitment to achieving gender equality in Australian workplaces.
Kimberley-Clark
Industry Update’s regular Women in Manufacturing section is dedicated to showing the contributions of women to Australia’s manufacturing industry. It’s a response to the industry’s desire to encourage more women to take up manufacturing careers, as well as to showcase the variety of jobs on offer.
Australia’s manufacturing industry employs more than a million people directly or indirectly, but data shows only 1 in 4 are women, well below the national average of 51 per cent. Industry heavyweights would like to see that number improve dramatically.
This year, the Federal Government announced an additional $6.7 million in funding towards programs to attract more women into STEM roles. And this edition shows how women who pursue STEM careers, or who are interested in how things are made, are valuable contributors to manufacturing companies, at both engineering and operations levels.
If you think you or someone you work with would make a great feature in Industry Update’s regular section on Women in Manufacturing, please contact the magazine via editor@industryupdate.com.au.
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