Broadband Network sees more Female Recruits in Scotland

Openreach has reported a positive change in the number of female recruits joining the company in both field and desk roles in Scotland.

The company is recruiting some 275 people into roles across Scotland in the current financial year, from the Highlands to the Borders. To date 17% of the intake is female – a statistic that in previous years stood in single digits.

This comes after the UK’s largest broadband network made a decision to put the language it uses to recruit employees under the microscope.

Since then, significant changes have been made throughout Openreach to the way jobs are advertised, helping drive big improvements in the number of women coming into new roles in 2021.

Openreach recently published its Diversity and Inclusion Commitments, which include that by 2025, 20% of trainee engineer recruits and 50% of external hires into management will be women.

Katie Milligan, Chair of Openreach’s Scotland Board (pictured above), said: “We’ve been amazed to see just how much of a difference subtle changes in language can make. 

“Despite four in five women admitting they wouldn’t consider working in engineering, more than half were interested in an entry-level engineering role once it had been rewritten in a consciously unbiased way.

“Research into the language barriers that impact female job applicants has shown that it plays a fundamental role in the recruitment process. We’d like to see more women choose careers in engineering, particularly here at Openreach, so we’ve been trying to address that. 

She added: “Engineering is a varied, stimulating and valuable career so it’s really important that we present it in ways that encourages as diverse a workforce as possible.

“Gender imbalance won’t be remedied overnight but we’ve been hugely encouraged to see a significantly higher percentage of women joining our Scottish workforce this year.”