Sky launches major engineering training programme for women

Sky has launched a paid training programme for female engineers that will offer career and development opportunities for up to 1,000 women interested in a becoming an engineer at the company.

The ‘Women in Home Service’ programme is part of Sky’s wider inclusion commitments to address gender imbalance within the business.

Currently just 2% of the engineering workforce at Sky are female. Over the next two years it aims to increase representation of female engineers to 20%. 

Over £2 million will be invested in the programme which will provide hands on and classroom-based learning. The focus will be on providing the necessary skills to become an engineer at Sky, plus provide training on workplace confidence, along with customer service and sales skills.  

Each of the women taking part in the scheme will have their own mentor throughout the programme, who themselves will receive specialist training on how best to give the right level of support and advice.

Chris Stylianou, Chief Operating Officer, said: “Engineering is an industry that has long seen underrepresentation of women. That is an issue for society and one that we at Sky have a responsibility to address. It is important that our Home Service engineers are as diverse and inclusive as the customers and communities they serve and that’s why we’re focussing our efforts on increasing the number of female engineers at Sky over the next two years.”

The programme runs alongside Sky’s wider ‘Women in Tech’ scheme, its Software Academy where 47% of the most recent intake last year was female and the Get into Tech initiative which provides women with the chance to take a free course that will teach them essential coding skills. In the first year since launch over 600 women have applied for the scheme.