Join Stopcocks Women Plumbers and Builders and gain the support of a like-minded community

An outline of some of the reasons women join Stopcocks Women Plumbers and Builders.

We’ve written blogs about training, blogs about mentoring, blogs to bring the website to the top of Google, and lots of blogs about gender diversity in the industry but not many blogs about the advantages of joining Stopcocks Women Plumbers and Builders, so here is one now.

Women join us for a number of reasons and at different times in their careers. I’ll run through some of them:

Some women join us while they are training or just after completing training; they mostly want the opportunity to earn and learn with the support of our mentoring scheme stopcocks.uk/mentoring/. Our licencees can request unlimited phone or onsite mentoring as required to enable them to complete work to their customers satisfaction and also gain skills and competence (and happy customers).

This service is not only helpful for trainees or inexperienced plumbers, many jobs present unfamiliar challenges because everyone’s house is different and even experienced plumbers often welcome the opportunity to discuss what is going to be the most effective solution.

Women tend to take a different approach to plumbing and other trades. They more often stand back and assess a situation, sometimes for quite a while before acting, whereas it is more common for men to start fast. Both approaches have their advantages. The male approach can sometimes save time, because they’re not dilly dallying, however, according to several (male) tutors women often have superior diagnostic skills because of the time they take sussing out exactly what is going on. Also, being prepared to ask for a second opinion is a more feminine trait, it doesn’t show a lack of confidence, on the contrary, it shows concern for the customers home and customers appreciate this.

Many women in college and in traditional companies are told to ‘get a move on’, this prevents them from playing to their strengths and can dent confidence.

Collaborating with other trades women at Stopcocks raises confidence because the  female working style is valued.

Our customers appreciate this approach. Often after one of our plumbers has completed a  job the customer phones to tell us that 3-5 plumbers had tried and been unable to fix a problem which our plumber has sorted out efficiently without fuss or mess.

Many women join Stopcocks to be able to work with other women and not be isolated. It’s estimated that just 0.4% of all plumbers in UK are female, for skilled trades, this is actually high, for electricians it is far lower. It’s not about having girly chats, women really do have a different approach to work in the trades; a different thinking style and being around other people who ‘get you’ is invaluable.

Other reasons women join us are around support in their own business. When you join us you are ‘working for yourself, but not alone’. Running your own business has many challenges that don’t come up in a ‘job’. Many of them around marketing and letting your local community know you’re there.

We have tried and tested ways of boosting our members’ pages on Google that also draw in local community networks, we also help and support our licencees to go out networking, which can be a huge hurdle unless you know how to do it. Gaining support of other businesses in your local area is a great way to let people know you’re out there and we have methods to give you the confidence to do this.

Other difficulties include, charging too little, giving too much and  not just going the extra mile, but going the extra hundred miles. These are great for customer service, but not if they leave you exhausted and out of pocket! If you do that for long you’ll be headed for burn-out.

Our community give you support and back up. There’s always someone to talk to about running your business, dealing with customers, marketing, pricing and most important of all, plumbing.

For more information or just a friendly chat about becoming a self-employed Stopcocks Woman Plumber or if you have a different trade and want to know how we can help you too, call us on 0800 8620010 or send an email to mica@stopcocks.uk

And for an idea about the journeys our plumbers take here’s Petra’s story https://stopcocks.uk/case-study-woman-plumber/