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Dundee business named one of UK’s best workplaces for women

Sheona Barlow, plant leader at Dundee's WL Gore & Associates
Sheona Barlow, plant leader at Dundee's WL Gore & Associates

A Dundee company is celebrating being named among the UK’s best workplaces for women.

Based at Dundee Technology Park, WL Gore assembles transmission cables for use in space.

The city operation is led by Sheona Barlow, who has worked for the business for two-thirds of her life.

Sheona joined the company aged 17 as a receptionist but is now plant leader with 150 staff.

She is proud of the fact her workforce is a roughly a 50:50 split between male and female workers, which is unusual for the male-dominated science and engineering sector.

Dundee firm’s ethos

This has not come about by chance. Gore has a series of initiatives aimed at recruiting and engaging female workers.

WL Gore and Associates base at Dundee Technology Park.

These include a Women’s Inclusion Council, Gore Reaching Out to Women (Grow) and a company-wide celebration of International Women’s Day.

Now Gore has been named in the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women 2022 Awards by Great Place to Work, a global authority on workplace culture.

Sheona is a big advocate of equality and diversity in the workplace and of girls embracing Stem subjects.

She said: “Gore was founded by both Bill and his wife Vieve Gore in 1958.

“They wanted to create a place that believed in every individual and encouraged experimentation, healthy risk taking, personal growth and development, and shared ownership for success.

“It’s not hard to see why being a woman at Gore never held me back.”

Sheona is proud the Dundee site has been recognised as one of the UK’s top workplaces for women.

“It’s thanks to the company culture set out from the very beginning that we’ve been recognised.

“Gore’s founders would have been delighted to see us achieve this accolade in 2022.”

WL Gore history

WL Gore and Associates developed the ultra-durable insulated wires used in space exploration, including Nasa’s Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

Gore is best known for its GORE-TEX technical fabric, and has 11,000 staff globally.

It selected Dundee as the location for its Space Centre of Excellence in 2019. This meant the transfer of work from its other facilities to the city.

Gore’s Women’s Inclusion Council was formed in March with the objective of supporting the increased selection and success of female talent across the entire business.

Great Places to Work applies data and insights from millions of employees working in 10,000 organisations across the world every year to benchmark individual performance.

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