Working Week recently reported on the work of the charity, LoveTech, to encourage youngsters, and in particular young girls, to consider a career in tech or engineering.

Given the skills shortage in these areas, not only in the island but globally, this is an initiative we should all be giving our backing to.

LoveTech chair, Angela van den Berg, said that it was crucial to increase young girls’ awareness of the range of jobs that are out there in these industries, so this week we are featuring two women who work in the tech and engineering teams at Manx Telecom and find out how they ended up in their respective roles.

Emma Cain and Susannah Harrison have very different jobs in the company but, essentially, both of them work on the infrastructure that provides all the services, including mobile, internet and voice calls.

In a fast-moving industry like telecoms that also means continuing to provide the new products and services that customers demand and expect.

One of the biggest of these for Manx Telecom right now is its rollout of fibre broadband services around the island and Emma is right in the thick of this.

Traditionally, broadband has been supplied through the existing copper phone line to a house or business. The new fibre broadband offers much faster speeds. It is supplied separately, through a fibre cable which is installed along overhead lines or though ducting underground in much the same way as the copper phone line.

The fibre cable allows data to be transmitted via beams of light, meaning it travels at light speed and won’t slow down over distances.

Emma is a Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) field engineer. She says: ’There are several elements to the job: pre-cable is one of the elements, where we try and get fibre cable along the telegraph poles overhead. We use rods to send them down ducts to the properties.

’The second element is doing the installations in people’s houses. And, more recently, I’ve moved across to the business team so now my day to day job is a lot more varied because I’m usually working in businesses and apartment blocks but occasionally I’ll still be doing residential instals and I’ll be doing pre-cabling as well.’

Before joining Manx Telecom in November 2020, Emma worked for 21 years as an engineer in the aircraft industry.

She says: ’When I left school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I took one of those tests that pointed me in certain directions to what I would be suited to. So my initial plan when I left school was to join the RAF and go into telecommunications and I always saw myself working for Manx Telecom. I went to Isle of Man College (now UCM) and did a National Diploma in General Engineering and that got my foot on the engineering ladder.’

After doing six weeks’ work experience at Manx Airlines as part of her college course, Emma was offered an apprenticeship.

She says: ’I then went away to Bristol and studied and got my licence. In all, I was 21 years in the aircraft industry.’

When Flybe took over the airline they closed the hangar in the Isle of Man and Emma moved to their base in Exeter where she worked for 13 years.

She says: ’There weren’t many women with Flybe: at any one time only a maximum of four female engineers at Flybe, out of around 200. There is a lot of responsibility as an aircraft engineer: you’re the final signature on jobs on the aircraft.’

When Covid hit and Flybe finally folded in March 2020, Emma was happy to return to the Isle of Man.

’I rode out lockdown but the aircraft industry looked like it was going to be in trouble for a long time. Then I heard about the Manx Telecom job and straightaway I thought: "Yeah, that’s perfect". I didn’t want to go into an office and this was a practical job where I could transfer my skills.’

Emma says: ’I love my job and learning new stuff every day, especially with going into the business side of things. There’s nothing I don’t like about this job.’

Whilst Emma is out and about all day, Susannah’s job is office based. She has been at Manx Telecom since 2001, working in a variety of roles. Her current job title is service operations manager.

’My role is to oversee the day to day operations of our 24/7 Service Operations Centre (SOC). The way I think of it is that the SOC is the eyes and ears of our services. Mobile, fixed and broadband, every service we have is constantly monitored by the SOC. We’re always here, we’re always available.

’Service assurance is the framework we build and develop to. It’s proactive service management to deliver an enhanced customer experience.

’Problems can range from a small outage to critical incidents - and when something goes wrong we’re also there to manage that incident as well and to communicate to our customers via various streams.

At the moment, Susannah adds, her team is currently recruiting and she would love to see more females applying: ’It’s a challenging environment but the SOC is a great entry point into telecoms networking and support. Some of our really highly skilled engineers all started in the SOC.’

Susannah recruits typically at degree level but she adds: ’Qualifications are everything but the things we can’t really teach are work ethic and ethos. We look for people who have that challenging approach, who want to see a customer have a great experience.’

Like Emma, Susannah also worked for Manx Airlines, where she trained in IT support. When she started at Manx Telecom it was also in an IT support role and she has since worked in other areas, including mobile sales and working with the company’s global roaming partners.

She says: ’I’m not an engineer, though I work in an engineering environment, but I’ve always loved technology. When you think about it, lighthouses are no longer manned because they have technology that does it all and most of that technology is a SIM card, sending data.

’Your fridge can now tell you that you need to order more cheese and that’s controlled by a cloud that isn’t in the sky! I love it, but we’ve become so reliant on it and, when it goes wrong, it impacts people. And not just as individual people: businesses too are wholly reliant on that technology being there to operate.’

Susannah, who has one other woman in her team, agrees that key to getting more young girls to consider a career in engineering or technology is to let them know about the wide range of jobs that are available in the sector.

She says: ’This has always traditionally been a male-dominated environment. There is still a big gender gap and I don’t think that’s necessarily because we’ve purposely created that. I think there is still an unknown element for women, and especially young girls. When they think of Manx Telecom, they think they will be climbing up poles or down in ducts but we have engineers who are office based. It’s software, and software engineers are completely different but a significant part of how we deliver our services.

’I’m very lucky with all my team: they’re incredibly respectful, there’s no gender difference between any of us and I love it, I absolutely love it.’

l Manx Telecom is recruiting in technology and engineering roles and the company would love to see more women applying. If you are interested, please visit www.manxtelecom/about/careers/job-vacancies