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Seeing the world of an Engineer through the eyes of students

Friday, 6 July, 2018

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Apprenticeships Engineering

Sky Home Service Team with Wakfield College Participant

Earlier this year the Sky Home Service team and Wakefield College created a dynamic partnership to gain new insights which will help to increase diversity in the Sky’s Home Service Engineer team, and give students special access to the Sky Home Service Apprenticeship scheme.

Ten students from Wakefield College, three men and three women, were recruited to accompany Home Service Engineers over four ‘Ride Out Days’ over four months. The Ride Out Days allowed students to experience first hand the joy and challenge of providing consistently high-quality customer service when installing Sky products in residential homes of all shapes and sizes, and in a wide variety of locations. During each ‘Ride Out Day’ the students and engineers jointly completed a series of questionnaires designed to uncover potential issues which would act as barriers to more women for applying for Home Service Engineer roles and to suggest solutions.

Tim, one of the ten Sky Home Service Engineers involved said the project ‘has definitely reinforced in my mind the idea that more women should be involved in Home Service and that the right women will be a huge asset to Sky.’’ Bethany, one of Wakefield College’s students said ‘’It’s opened my eyes into the Home Service Engineering Career, I would never have expected the job to be like it was today where we had to think out of the box and use our initiative. It’s made me a better engineer already and a more confident person’’.

Three of the students have gone forward and successfully applied to the Sky Home Service Engineer Apprenticeship scheme.

Helen Oldham, the architect of the project, said at the wrap-up event for the project that she was ‘’humbled and delighted with the thoughtful responses from everyone involved, the enthusiasm of the students and the open-minded approach of the engineers. There were some amazing ideas and insights put forward in the questionnaires, many of which are now being built into the Home Service recruitment strategy. I enjoyed every moment of the project from start to finish and I have all the brilliant participants, Sky and Wakefield College staff to thank for that.’’