Maria

Background
Maria has been working as a traffic marshall for the past 3 years, and was previously employed as a site cleaner also for 3 years. She has an outgoing personality and makes everyone feel welcome. Her aspiration is to progress in her role as she enjoys the construction environment. She was hoping to earn more money and is happy to take up training and additional responsibilities to enable this progression.

Barriers
Maria struggled with furthering her career due to a lack of professional confidence, not realising her full potential and not being aware of opportunities available to her within the company. She was mindful that she needed additional training to increase her confidence and enable her to progress.

Intervention
After taking up the MoU CPD Six Steps Career Success workshops over 6-months in 2020 and being mentored during MOU, Maria felt she understood better how she could expand her skills set in the construction industry. She was particularly curious of other participants’ journeys and felt very inspired to hear from the other women about how they managed to overcome barriers and succeed.

With the help of her mentor she also identified that gaining a CITB Site Supervisor Safety Training Scheme (SSSTS) certificate would help her in her aspiration to progress within the company.

Key Outcomes
Maria completed her SSSTS certificate in December 2020 as part of the MoU training offer. She also embarked on First Aid at Work training. Both interventions put Maria in a good position to be considered for a promotion and she completed the programme feeling very positive that this avenue is now open for her.

Maria is extrememly pleased to report that in September 2021 she progressed into a new role as an Office Administrator for the largest rail infrasturcuture organisation in Europe.

Maria’s basic salary increase, taken from her contracted hours, is 18.64% more per hour, however Maria has the opportunity to work overtime at this job, which equates to 77.97% more than her original salary.  

Maria is currently on-site with Divinia who is another women that WiC have also supported into her role as a Quantity Surveyor.

Personal impact and testimony

Maria says: “Thank you to the team for being an amazing mentor and trainer. My self-confidence has improved so much and I am very pleased to have completed my SSSTS and First Aid at Work training; it will look good on my CV, too. I also want to thank my employer for putting me forward to the MoU programme so that I could benefit from the training. I would love to find out how the other women progressed; it was so inspiring to meet them and to hear their stories in construction.”

Since progressing, Maria also adds, “I am so happy with my new job as an Administrator. I felt that when I started this job I couldn’t learn [new sector]…now everything is fine and I am so happy. It’s everything I ever wanted. I have been asked how I want the reception area to be rennovated”