Wakefield College - Sky Reverse Mentoring Scheme
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Sky Reverse Mentoring Scheme

Monday, 12 March, 2018

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Sky Studios

Nine Level 3 students from various courses at Wakefield College have been selected to be a part of a major diversity project with Sky.

It aims to help create new thinking by adapting a reverse mentoring initiative, the students will be matched with home engineers from Sky and spend four days with them to capture views on diversity, technology and internal communication channels. Results from this research will be pooled to add to other Sky insights to improve the attraction and retention rates for women in the home service team. 

Andrew Hopley from Sky Home Service team said, “I am interested to see the students’ perception of the role before and after the four days.”

The launch, on 26th February 2018 at Sky’s Head Office in London, kicked off the scheme which will run until July 2018. Afterwards, participating students will be given unique access to the Sky Apprenticeship Scheme. 

Bethany Parker, studying a Level 3 Extended Diploma Mechanical Engineering course said, “I’m really enjoyed visiting the Sky Headquarters, meeting the engineers and having a new experience that’ll help my career.”

Sky and Wakefield College will pioneer a new approach, addressing the diversity issue in the installation team where currently only 2% of 3,376 Sky home service engineers are women. Helen Oldham founder of Grow and Thrive is leading the project, who is an expert in the reverse mentoring and diversity space. Helen says, “Sky have taken some very positive steps to improve gender diversity in their Home Service team and I’m delighted to have led this important strand of their inclusion strategy. The partnership has been formed with Wakefield College because as they have a reputation for delivering high quality apprenticeship schemes.” 

The students enjoyed a tour around the studios and offices, and issued with Sky uniform, had a full project briefing and met their Project Sky Partner. 

Emily East from our L3 Childcare and Education Course said, “What an experience so far, such an amazing opportunity! I really enjoyed today and I’m so excited to see where this takes me.” Charley Lynch, who is studying L3 Extended Diploma in ICT added, “The day has been fantastic, from seeing the studios, meeting the engineers and getting to know them and their roles within Sky. I can’t wait to see what opportunities and experiences I can gain.”

Helen Oldham went onto say “The learning which the Wakefield College students will provide in this reverse mentoring initiative will be gold dust in shaping the future recruitment of Sky Home Service Engineers. The enthusiasm from both the students and the engineer community has been superb so I can’t wait to see the results.”

Ends

CONTACT: For more information email info@wakefield.ac.uk, or telephone 01924 789789.
DATE: 12 March, 2018

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