17 Gen 2023

Celebrating International Mentoring Day

On International Mentoring Day, at Babcock we’re pleased to be celebrating the impact mentoring has across our organisation.

Mentoring is a valuable learning experience which offers support to employees looking to acquire new knowledge and skills, learn different perspectives or to work through specific challenges.

It teaches us to lift each other up, create powerful positive long-lasting relationships and ultimately build a more agile, effective and inclusive workplace for us all. 

We are therefore proud to be taking part in the Women in Defence UK cross-sector mentoring programme which they run in partnership with Moving Ahead, a specialist diversity, development and inclusion organisation. It is a unique mentoring programme which brings together mentors and mentees from across the defence sector.

We have 20 mentors and 20 mentees from Babcock participating in the nine-month programme. Karl Fearnley, an employee within our Marine business, is currently mentoring an RAF Squadron Commander, he commented, “Working with the Women in Defence programme for the last two years has enabled me to not only give something back to people within the industry and provide different perspectives and insight, but it has also allowed me to develop my understanding of life at the front line. I now have a greater level of understanding of the careers, challenges, and opportunities within the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. The whole experience has been extremely rewarding.”

While Samantha Rudd, within our Land business, whose mentor is a senior leader from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, said, “It’s the first time that I have had a formal mentor and I have learnt so much from them. Working with a mentor gave me the confidence I needed to put myself forward for a promotion. I was really happy to have been successful.” We look forward to continuing to increase the number of Babcock employees involved with a mentoring scheme and seeing the positive impact it has on helping us to create a safe and secure world, together.