Last month saw International Women’s Day (IWD) and the theme for 2021 was #ChooseToChallenge.

To choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality, and to choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements.

Resideo, like many other companies around the world, celebrated the day both internally and externally. And one of our next steps is to start a broad conversation about what the current challenges are to rebalancing the UK heating Industry, and how we seek out and create new opportunities for future professional installers.

In addition to exploring views on the current gender imbalance, we will also discuss skills gaps in general and what more needs to be done to encourage more installers – both female and male – into the industry, so the future workforce has the balance it needs to deal with the challenges ahead, and take full advantage of the opportunities.

We will look at the state of the industry today, the gender imbalance, the skills gap in general and what needs to be done to drive more installers – male and female – into the industry to ensure we have talent continuing to come through.

Is the industry is set up to deliver the 10-point plan for a green revolution? Can it meet targets?

What skills are lacking as an industry and how can we close the skills gap - upskilling existing plumbers, encouraging more engineers into the industry, harnessing those with transferable skills?

Do they see barriers that are stopping women (or men) considering the industry, or is this starting to ease? Can more be done?

Is the heating industry seen as an option for those wanting to switch career and what is involved in getting up to speed – is it flexible enough to appeal to a wider audience, is it set up to appeal to both men and women respectively, for example, are job ads worded in a way that will appeal to both men AND women, should they be different? Or the same?

What does the future workforce of the heating industry look like? Is the move into more sustainable heating creating more interest as they know they can be involved in something that can make a difference or is the uncertainty of when and how sustainable heating will roll out putting new starters off etc.

How can we address the industry's skill gap for the future?