Women in Trades at LiveWest

Our Women in Trades campaign is helping to promote equality and inclusivity, providing opportunities for women in our diverse workforce.

We are proud to support International Women’s Day (Tuesday 8 March), which calls for a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination. We are playing our part in promoting women’s equality, stepping up our Women in Trades campaign to provide opportunities to secure a career with us, ensuring we have a diverse and inclusive workforce. 

We have already made progress in this journey, and we have ambitious targets to continue increasing the number of females working across a range of trades at LiveWest. Last year 1.7% of our trades’ workforce was female, however we have already increased that figure to 4%. 

We have also just appointed 10 new apprentices to our trades’ workforce, with five being women. The new wave of apprentices will start in April and will work across a number of trades in our In-House Maintenance team. Throughout our previous two intakes of trade apprentices 27% are female, which is significant progress from 7% last year.

Our Director of Property Services, Liane Sheppard, is spearheading the Women in Trades campaign and has set ambitious targets for a continued rise in the number of females securing a route into trades.

Liane Sheppard said: “Women’s International Day is a celebration of female equality, and we fully support it. LiveWest is an organisation which values and celebrates diversity and inclusivity. We all want to see a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination and organisations can play their part in that.

“We have some great female role models already working across our trades and our recent attempts to increase our female trades workforce has been warmly welcomed. It is obvious that trades are still male-dominated, but there is clearly a change in attitudes in society. We want to capture this shift and use it to promote our opportunities for women to forge a career in trades.

“For us, it is about empowering more women to pursue a trades career. The message is clear from LiveWest – you can achieve your career aspirations with us. Apprenticeships are not just for young people and because we pay the real Living Wage, we are attracting women considering a career change. We have just appointed a woman in her 40s as an apprentice electrician and she has been a chef most of her working life.

“LiveWest is committed to welcoming female colleagues to our trades and this could be the start of an exciting journey for those interested in launching or changing their careers.”

Orla Gorman is one of our new multi-trade apprentices after developing a passion for all things practical.

Bristol-based Orla said: “LiveWest are doing a great job at welcoming women into trades. I have seen quite a few women out on the job, and it is great to see women are being encouraged to get into trades. It was thought at one time that women can’t do some jobs, but people are now realising that they can.

“People are realising that women are strong and skilled enough to do the same job. It not just men who can lift heavy objects, saw a piece of wood or fix a radiator. It is nice to see it becoming more normal to have women doing trades jobs and actually some customers might like a woman arriving at their home to do a job.

“My advice to any female out there thinking of doing something similar is go ahead and do it.”