To celebrate International Women’s Day, we sat down with some of the female members of our team to ask them three simple questions to help paint a picture of how they came to find their chosen careers and what they love about working at Kirkstall Precision Engineering.
Check out the answers from Pal, Nina, Anna and Ewa below!
Pal Wattanakull – Accounts and Customer Services Executive
What do you love about working at Kirkstall Precision Engineering?
First is the diversity of our team, here at Kirkstall Precision, we have such a rich culture and age difference. You’ll always find interesting and funny conversations in our canteen. Another thing I love is the variety of projects that we have opportunities to work on. Every day we are walking into high-complexity and high-accuracy work, each product and part has its own journey and innovations behind it. Knowing that parts we’ve produced will ended up in ventilators to save lives, being used in marine vessels to collect data or being used in University for research and development is incredible.
Why do you think it’s important that women are seen to be working in the engineering sector?
In the past, the engineering sector might have been seen as a “male dominant”. It is important that we have gender diversity in every sectors not just engineering. I think times have changed and so has our culture. Women do not have to stay at home and be a housewife anymore, each individual can have their own choice based on what is best for them. It has been long enough now to prove that engineering is a transferable skill that anyone can learn. I hope this will inspire our younger generation that there are no limits to what they can choose as a career path.
If more women were in engineering, what qualities do you think they’d bring?
Having more women in engineering sector means that we can enhance gender diversity. Therefore, the organisation will get wider perspectives and fresh outlooks to understand the market and to support business decisions. Women’s traits in caring and attention to detail will also help to improve the quality of our work.
Nina Ambler – Technical Administration
What do you love about working at Kirkstall Precision Engineering?
The different variety of instruments / products working their way around the workshop, seeing the progression of each come to life from start to finish! All my colleagues of course, still a close knit team, working close together!
Why do you think it’s important that women are seen to be working in the engineering sector?
Engineering is no longer a ‘man’s world’ it used to be seen as an old fashioned dark and dirty environment, however technologies and ideas have come on in leaps and bounds, it is important to be seen that both men and women can create and bring forward ideas and that they are more than capable of carrying these out.
More and more women are now choosing engineering (and other sectors) as a career rather than just a job.
If more women were in engineering, what qualities do you think they’d bring?
Qualities women naturally have are the ability to multi task (so you get more done) women like talking (so are better at communicating ideas/thoughts etc…) and have a keen eye for details and are more thorough when undertaking tasks. All good qualities women can bring to engineering.
Anna Termanowska and Ewa Wojcik Quality Control Inspectors
What do you love about working at Kirkstall Precision Engineering?
First of all, The People! A bunch of individuals but working well as a team, makes this place feel more like home not a workplace.
In Inspection Department is always a lot happening, many different clients that we work with means wide range of products and components and that makes our job interesting and also challenging at times.
Why do you think it’s important that women are seen to be working in the engineering sector?
Diversity is good in any workplace, women have great ideas and can have different views on occurring issues and ways of solving the problem.
If more women were in engineering, what qualities do you think they’d bring?
The same as it is expected from men to bring.