As the challenges, opportunities and expectations facing engineers evolve, the importance upskilling and retaining women in the profession has never been clearer. Ahead of the 3rd annual Women in Engineering Summit, we asked Felicity Furey, Co-founder of The Power of Engineering and Chief Executive Officer at WeAspire, to discuss how to best upskill women in engineering, help them achieve their career goals, and retain them by providing a diverse and positive workplace culture.

The starting point: why organisations must focus on attracting a diverse and inclusive workforce

Felicity emphasised the invaluable benefits in driving diversity in an organisation. "The research shows that businesses are better off with diverse candidates. The business case has been proved and it’s strong. We make more money, are more productive, and it’s good for everyone. For example, McKinsey found that profit increased by 2.4% for every 10% increase in diversity in senior leadership teams (Diversity Wins Report 2020)."

How to develop future leaders and provide support to women on their career journey

Beyond merely attracting women into the profession, an organisation must then set them on a path to grow as engineers and leaders. While the path to effective leadership isn’t always straightforward or easy, it’s essential. Felicity explained that "Being a first-time leader is arguably one of the most challenging career transitions and it is a real opportunity to retain great people. We don’t really get any training when making that first leap from engineer to leader—I certainly didn’t—so technical professionals like engineers can sometimes struggle to juggle the leadership aspects of a role while also still needing to do the technical work.”

Felicity elaborated, “by helping first-time leaders make this transition in their career, we demonstrate they are valued and provide great experiences so they love where they work, they want to stay, and they want to come back from parental leave.”

Explaining how her organisation approaches leadership development, Felicity explained that “our mission is to be the most effective first-time leader training for people in construction and infrastructure, so we are obsessed with effectiveness. From our work with 833 leaders, we have seen that creating ongoing initiatives that engage, enliven, and elevate first-time leaders, as well as engaging executive leaders to help change the system, is effective. We leverage immersive scenario simulations to provide practice opportunities in a safe space. McKinsey found this style of training increases retention by 500%."

Upskilling and career progression for female engineers

Felicity noted that "it’s a tricky balance to provide career progression opportunities for all, and it is important that we don’t do work that ‘fixes the women’ or that makes people, including men, feel excluded. For women, providing a safe space is critical, particularly when we are upskilling them. That’s why we create simulation role plays to practice difficult conversations with mentors and take people off-site so they can share what is really going on. We also focus on individuals’ strengths, their values, and beliefs so they can leverage these rather than trying to get them to be someone else."

Creating a more diverse, inclusive and supportive workplace culture

Once an organisation nurtures an effective leader, the work isn’t done. It’s then critical that the organisation can retain that leader. One way to do so is to ensure there’s a diverse and positive workplace culture. According to Felicity, a number of paths exist to create that sort of environment. "There are many ways that this can be achieved, from attraction, retention, promotion, and acknowledging people. In fact, we reviewed over 243 academic papers on gender equity to find out what works. The findings highlighted more than 26 practical actions companies can take. Two that I loved were:

Changing the performance rating system from being out of 10 to being out of 6, which removed gender bias in performance review in male-dominated industries.

Have people write their CV to reflect the number of years of experience, like ‘3 years – engineer, 2 years – manager’ rather than ‘2012-2016 engineer, then 2018-2020 manager.’ This removes some of the bias for career breaks. People with career breaks increased their callback rate by 13%, and even those without a career break increased their callbacks by 8%.

Felicity Furey (The Power of Engineering and WeAspire) and over 30 other engineering leaders will be speaking at the Women in Engineering Summit 2024 from 15-17 October in Sydney. Learn more.

To access the detailed conference program, download the brochure here.