Career opportunities for women boost
The National Skill Academy for Food & Drink has launched a UK-wide drive to propel women up the industry career ladder.
The move follows the Academy’s success in securing a fighting fund of £232,000 from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills to support training and development for up to 650 women employed in the sector in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The funds enable the Academy to offer businesses of any size discounts of around 70% on training for women across a range of in-demand food industry skills including leadership and management, technical skills and interpersonal skills.
The Academy’s CEO Justine Fosh says the aim of the funding is to help businesses support the advancement of women in the sector. “Women remain under represented across food and drink manufacturing’s current UK workforce and they are particularly under represented in management roles as well as in highly valued engineering and technical roles,” says Fosh.
Past Academy efforts to support sector businesses to redress the balance have been popular and a key reason for this has been the flexibility of the Women in Work project funding. Research from the latest project showed that training increases confidence, understanding of the business, motivation and effectiveness in the job for women who participated.
“We believe this programme will be yet another milestone in the journey toward ensuring all women working in food and drink have the opportunity to release their full potential and that businesses can look to their female workforce, as well as their male staff, for the skills they need.”
Businesses interested in utilising Academy support to offer additional development opportunities to their female staff are invited to contact the Academy’s head of business development Michael Taylor for further details by emailing m.taylor@foodanddrink.nsacademy.co.uk