Why Integra Believes Hiring More Women In Manufacturing Makes Sense

On 12th August 2022, Industry Update published an interview with Integra's Commercial Director, Erika Hughes, as part of their regular Women in Manufacturing column – a response to the growing number of women joining manufacturing and the industry’s desire to encourage even more women to participate, as well as to showcase the variety of jobs in the sector.

You can read the original article on their website or we've reprinted the text below (thanks to Industry Update for taking the time to talk to us):

Creativity and intuition: why Integra Systems believes hiring more women in manufacturing makes sense

By MARGIE SMITHURST

As an SME at the forefront of Industry 4.0 design and manufacturing, Melbourne-based Integra Systems sees itself as a prime candidate for employing women - not just as engineers in their design team, but giving them critical hands-on production experience on the assembly floor.

“Most women will aim for corporates, but I think the best development opportunities are in SMEs. In an SME, you’re made accountable for everything you do and touch, and it all has a positive or negative effect on the business. You’re at the coalface, and young women in particular like to see outcomes,“ says Erika Hughes, the company’s Commercial Director and co-owner. 

As a female company leader, Erika understands the value of having women in leadership roles and in the company’s teams, and she sat down with Industry Update to tell us more. 

IU: How would you describe Integra Systems manufacturing business? 

Erika Hughes:  We are specialists in the development and manufacturing of light metal-based products -  for example, digital displays, office and street furniture, electrical and electronics enclosures and other sheet metal-based products. 

Our niche is high-variability, medium volume, which is unique for us. Most of our clients are looking for bespoke designs with short lead times and agile manufacturing, so they need relentless innovators, and we’re constantly reworking our approaches. We basically do design right through to delivery, and have our own manufacturing facility that specialises in sheet metal, plus a micro-economy of local manufacturers, mainly in Victoria, who we outsource to when we need their services. But it’s all locally made. 

IU: We know there’s an issue with attracting women to STEM study, which means that for employers looking for women, it’s a challenge. What sort of work environment has Integra Systems created to attract women? 

Erika Hughes: By becoming a fully digitalised operation that’s integrated with Industry 4.0 principles, Integra Systems has made manufacturing attractive and fun. Throughout our operation we have touchscreen kiosks that provide performance inputs and outputs, as well as activity centre dashboards. So it’s a highly innovative workplace where everyone is encouraged to put forward suggestions, and to be curious and give feedback on our products and design.  

That’s where we see the advantages of having women on our teams - their intuition and user insights are noticeably strong, and women have been flourishing in creative and leadership roles. 

We’ve always encouraged diversity in the company, and 30 percent of our workforce is now women.

We have women in the design team as engineers and industrial designers, within sales and marketing, and women in leadership roles in the production environment as well as within the production team. In those roles, women communicate really well - their empathy and intuition can be a real asset.

From my point of view as a leader and watching the dynamics between the men and women, I’ve noticed so much more balance and better output when you don’t have an environment full of testosterone.

Plus, we are fortunate we have a fairly young team and the younger guys really appreciate working with women. 

We also offer flexible working conditions, for people with young children and who need to work school hours - they can still make a huge contribution. 

But while I’ve seen the transformative effect these women can have, we are still struggling to find women to hire!

IU: You’re helped by universities in that regard, aren’t you? 

Erika: Yes. We have strong relationships with the industry partner divisions in Victorian universities. Typically they’ll present me with their top students for internship programs, and where possible I’ll ask for young women. Those programs, which are for design engineers who also sometimes come on in our production teams, can lead to full-time employment with us. 

All of our designers - that is, everyone who works in our engineering team - work in the manufacturing environment for a period of time. Our engineers understand that a great designer is born from knowing how things are made and put together, so we give them that opportunity. 

Erika Hughes, Commercial Director

We’ve had young female engineers come through as students working part time, and they’re happy to work in the production team while waiting for an opportunity to get into the design team. Quite a lot of young women actually express an interest in working with the machines. 

The challenge is attracting and retaining the women in those positions. 

We also hire unskilled women who aren’t STEM graduates who want to use their hands, and who then go on to develop an interest in STEM after working with us. 

In 2021, for example, we took on a group of year 12 girls on Saturdays, and they absolutely thrived. Some of them went on to study STEM at university, which I think is because we showed them opportunities and they felt valued. It’s about setting the bar for young women’s expectations in manufacturing workplaces. 

IU: How important is merit in your hiring policy? 

Erika: Even though we want to attract more women to Integra Systems, I do deeply believe every person should be selected on merit. But when we’re presented with candidates, male or female, more often than not it’s the women who present well and are selected on merit. Then the dynamics, knowledge and creativity that they inject adds value to the whole team.

We are very fortunate that we’ve had some really good women to choose from. 

IU: You’re a mentor of women in manufacturing too?  

Erika: Yes, AMTIL (Australian Manufacturing Technology Institute Limited) asked me to be part of a new program this year which sees women in manufacturing leadership roles mentoring other women in various positions, including leadership, within the manufacturing industry.

In a relatively male-dominated environment, we work through some of the challenges for building confidence.  A lot of women in manufacturing don’t do the networking they should be doing to progress their careers. It’s about overcoming that ‘imposter syndrome’, which I see a lot of. These women have the same opportunities as everyone else, but they don’t know whether they’re worthy of them or how to communicate their value proposition, so it’s about working through ‘blockages’ that are standing in their way - and often that’s to do with networking and developing relationships within the organisation.  

Women engineers can typically be a bit introverted, so it’s important from a mentoring point of view to draw them out and help them get where they want to go.