SAES actively promotes the recruitment of women engineers increasing their visibility and empowering them to middle and top management roles. Forty percent of the Board of Directors are women, including the General Manager, Victoria Ruiz.
Since 2019, SAES continues to work to increase the number of women engineers on board, now present in all SAES departments and levels: from those working on engineering services to those in administration, from low to middle and top-level management roles, including the General Manger, Victoria Ruiz.
According to official data, unemployment rates among women have been raising in recent years, as well as the gender gap and the so-called “glass ceiling” that hinders them from accessing managerial and top positions. Victoria Ruiz, SAES General Manager, states that “40% of SAES Board of Directors are women, and we are so proud of it, we will continue to work towards raising this percentage as well as the number of women engineers who lead medium and large teams and projects”.
In order to break that ‘glass ceiling’, SAES has developed a significant work-life balance plan that has been active for many years which allows employees, men and women, to benefit from it and improve their work-life balance. According to Victoria Ruiz, “we take social impact steps which do not affect the economic performance of the company”, such as: intensive working day throughout the year; flexible working hours with a common hour range shared among all; teleworking; and the right to disconnect during off hours.
SAES also participates in the ‘Excellence of Mentoring’ programme developed by the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) and the Royal Academy of Engineering. The objective is to facilitate female engineering students in their last year of university to join the labour force, by offering them specific and tailor-made training to achieve their goals and empowering talented women in science and engineering. SAES takes part this year with three mentors: Esther Corbalan, mathematician and Director of Human Resources; Consuelo Lazaro, physicist and Director of Operations; and Esther Moya, mathematician and project manager.
SAES, as an engineering company, has a low percentage of women employees “as a faithful reflection of representation of women in University and more specifically in sciences degrees,” says Victoria Ruiz, but “we are actively working to promote talented women and to protect work-life balance policies to allow families get organised on equal terms, without this having a detrimental effect on their career development”.