Forterra celebrates female brick plant manager

Brick and block maker Forterra chose International Women’s day 2024 to celebrate Charlotte Wood, plant manager at its Measham Brickworks in Leicestershire.

Nottingham-born Wood has moved through diverse sectors such as food production, beverages, and healthcare, where she honed her skills in management, lean process improvement, and cultural change, before taking on the role of plant manager at Measham brickworks in January 2023.

Brickworks have traditionally been occupied predominantly by male workers, and a large proportion of careers in the industry rely on engineering and mathematics-related qualifications, in which women are still underrepresented.

“I think those stereotypes can deter many women from entering an industry such as this one,” says Wood. “When people are deterred from even considering a particular career, it becomes a significant barrier against inclusion. I was of course apprehensive about starting this new role, and I didn’t know extraordinary amounts about brickmaking when I joined. With my 23 years of extensive experience in leadership, improvement and development, though, I knew I was more than capable. I’ve felt so welcome at Measham. There’s such a strong team here and such a strong sense of community, with several employees being long-servers for 30 years or more, and many others being the second or even third generation from their family to work there. What’s inspiring is that this sense of tradition hasn’t at all proved a barrier to inclusion in my case. Measham is a testament to the fact that honouring tradition and effecting change can and should complement one another.”

 “Endless bureaucracy at previous roles prevented real change, but at Forterra there’s scope to really impact things,” adds Charlotte. “The organisation is on a great cultural journey, focused on driving an improvement in its values and ensuring it continues manufacturing excellence.”

 The number of female workers within the 66-strong Measham team has expanded, Wood explains. “We’ve always had a female electrician on shift and a female Administration Manager, but we now also have a female employee who’s joining as part of our Continuous Improvement Scheme, and an Engineering Planner. This is still a fairly low number, but it’s much higher than it’s ever been, and I look forward to hiring even more talented women. The manufacturing industry has a vast array of career trajectories, from programming to environmental planning to administration to copywriting. The point is, it isn’t all about operating machinery and heavy lifting, valuable as these things are. There are countless opportunities for all sorts of people in this industry, and it’s in the industry’s own interests to open out recruitment to as large a talent pool as possible.”