International Women's Day 2022

On International Women’s Day we’ve partnered with Pest Solutions to celebrate just some of the tremendous team and their achievements within the Pest Control Industry.

Isabelle Duboille, Head of EMEA (Environmental Science) said, “At Envu we are committed to strengthening a more inclusive and diverse workforce, as diversity is a key ingredient of creative and innovative teams that perform. Gender balance is one of the pillars of this diversity. That’s why we aspire to establish a gender balance across all combined management levels by 2025. By 2030, Envu aspires to reach gender parity on each individual management level. So, on International Women’s Day and indeed every day we are proud to celebrate companies that embrace and enable equality.”

Women account for 40 per cent of the global workforce*, yet not surprisingly pest management remains a male dominated profession. Recent analysis from the BPCA membership database suggests that only around 4.5% of all staff are women (4% in August 2020).   

Dee Ward-Thompson, Head of Membership and Technical at the British Pest Control Association, commented, “While pest management is still a male-dominated profession, I've seen many women join our industry in 10 years. Women entering our profession are always regarded with the utmost respect and encouraged to develop their skills, with many becoming leaders within the sector. More and more women are seeing the benefits of joining this wonderful sector and the potential long term career path.”

Testament to this view are pest control companies such as Pest Solutions, with women comprising 36.3% of the servicing workforce.  

Chris Cagienard, Managing Director at Pest Solutions whole-heartedly supports the belief that fair representation of women in the workplace can have positive outcomes across the organisation.  However, he believes performance excellence is not down to gender, it’s reliant on recruiting and nurturing the very best talent for your business. 

Organisations can close the gender gap by making equality a decisive objective, just like any other business objective. The interesting point is, Pest Solutions has not set this as an objective, more they spend time identifying the right skills, attitude, and establish sound management where the whole team can thrive, regardless of gender.  This absence of bias perpetuates a healthy and balanced culture. #BreakTheBias

Thank you to Chris Cagienard; Natasha Mackay, Graduate Service Technician; Hayley Raferty, Financial Director; Gemma Sutherland, Graduate Service Technician for your comment. What’s more, Gemma will be talking at the forthcoming BPCA parliamentary event, encouraging young people and women into the industry.

Please watch our video and consider skills, career progression, confidence, positive change, continuous professional development and more. 

*source – People Management magazine, October 2020