The Cummins gamechangers | The Northern Echo

Many years of the right messages being built into the company’s DNA by the right people in the right way means that Cummins is now self-perpetuating. The ethos here is not a buzzword or a convenient slogan on corridor walls, it IS Cummins.

I’ve been to the landmark Darlington campus many times now and I genuinely look forward to each visit, either because there is a gamechanger to talk about – or there are gamechangers to meet.

Cummins has been manufacturing in Darlington since 1965. Around 1,500 people work at the plant across engine assembly, exhaust aftertreatment manufacture, technical operations and business support functions, helping produce tens of thousands of engines and three years ago the factory celebrated a historic landmark: its 1.5 millionth mid-range engine.

The stats are enough to impress, but you should really come down to meet the people – that’s where the engine really starts to accelerate.

One of the reason why the Darlington staff thrive is that they are part of a company where diversity, equity and inclusion are no longer targets or goals, in many departments they are achievements. As hundreds of staff will tell you, the job-interview promise of what was behind the doors on Yarm Road is actually what you will find. They really are world leaders in what they make and who they employ.

Take Jude Glew and Carolyn Boustead, for example.

Jude manages the corporate travel and expense programme for Europe, Africa and Middle East while Carolyn is an Account Executive and BDM – both vital cogs in that pristine engine, who speak passionately about their work and the support they have had from the Cummins infrastructure to drive forward their careers here.

There are many routes into Cummins, and Durham-born Carolyn admits her path could have gone into a completely different direction, but a setback was the spur for her to turn things around and head here more than 17 years ago.

Sitting in one of the immaculate Cummins boardrooms, she tells me: ‘My career has essentially been Cummins, and I think if you walk around and speak to people in the building, you’ll find a lot of people with that same long length of service which I think is testament to how well we support and develop people within the business.

‘To get here, I went to school in Durham, then university in Nottingham where I did a degree in design management. But I never really had a targeted path in mind of where I wanted to go, I just found my strengths and worked with them.

‘When I got my degree I came back home to Durham and got a house with my boyfriend – who is now my husband. We had to pay a mortgage, so I just went out and got whatever jobs I could, which included a lot of contracting work, before I got a job doing website development in a very small business.

‘I thought this was going to be my fantastic career and would allow me to develop my skills and ambitions. But after about six months I was made redundant and the company was sold.

‘That mortgage urgency came right back again, so I went to an agency and got an interview at Cummins to do business admin in the Design & Development department. So I took it even though it was only a six-month contract.

‘Pretty early on, I realised that this was a really interesting place to work. I liked the people and the culture and I saw that there was potential for me to progress.

‘I never really saw myself in engineering – it just wasn’t a path I thought I would go down and at the time there was one more likely set route that women would take and that was in customer services – in HR, finance or project management.

‘All of the women that I was working with were all going in those similar routes, but I didn’t want to compete with my friends, I wanted to differentiate myself, so I started to learn more technical stuff and took a different route.

‘The company were very good at supporting me in that and there were a couple of influential women in technical roles who really helped me and inspired me. I think the company has continually evolved ever since to give a full range of routes into every part of the business.’

Jude was driven to the campus by her passion for travel – and

has certainly taken a lengthy journey to finally reach her

destination. Even though she had been past the site many times as she grew up in Darlington, she only knew it as a landmark building, not a place where she might one day build her career.

‘I grew up quite close to the plant and knew it was an engineering firm but never in a million years would have thought I’d have ended up here,’ she admits.

‘I went to school and didn’t do very well, so I ended up in retail travel working for a large chain of travel agents called Lunn Poly. I did that as my apprenticeship and loved it – but decided after six years that it didn’t have the career opportunities I was looking for, so when I was 22 I decided to go to university as a mature student, and did a degree in Business Administration.

‘Then I decided I wanted to be a teacher, and I ended up being in education for 12 years, working in a secondary school and at Darlington College for a few years teaching business studies alongside travel and tourism.

‘Now, I’m not one to sit and be unhappy, so when I decided education was no longer for me, and I was looking for the next step, I talked to a relative who said “why don’t you come and work at Cummins” and I told him “well, I’m not an engineer”.

‘But then he brought home this job description and said it was business admin and would fit me perfectly. And that’s how I got here, and I am so pleased I made that long journey because it really is such an amazing place to work with so many opportunities, whether you’re male or female.

‘Equality is now embedded in the culture at Darlington and all the other Cummins sites I’ve been to.

‘I think for me, because I’ve worked in other industries, I see the value of how Cummins works and I can honestly say I don’t envisage going anywhere else. I’m from the town and I’m committed to the company and what they’ve done for me.

I’ve had several promotions while I’ve been here which shows that it’s one of those cultures that if you put the work in, they really do reward you and look after you.”

For Carolyn, the Cummins cogs are perfectly aligned and she has found her connection here, with as many chances as she wants to progress and diversify within the company.

‘This is definitely a long-term relationship,” she says.

‘The company has developed and supported me all the way through and it’s very much in its culture that once they find good people they want to keep them, so they work with us and open up new opportunities so we can fulfil our ambitions.

‘For me, that sort of approach to diversity and equality is spreading fast right across the region as more large companies recognise the need for a diverse pipeline of skills and people. In turn, that means more support for schools and the STEM initiatives that are helping to enrich the culture of companies. There is a lot of good work being done in the North East, but it can still sometimes be a challenge to bust the stereotypes that young girls grow up with.

‘We’ve got an Instagram culture that makes it very difficult to support girls if they want to go into an engineering or a male-dominated environment. It’s hard to make them feel comfortable with that unless they have role models who can say to them look, you can still be feminine and work at places like Cummins where you can be yourself in a supportive environment.’

The belief in being able to succeed is crucial for the next generation of workers and starts with parents who will pass on their view of the region and its potential to their children, which then shapes their approach to their own prospects. If the wrong conversation that goes on in the house passes into junior school, secondary school and then into FE, the battle becomes all the more challenging. But companies like Cummins are turning the tide of opinion and showing – proving – that the message can be a positive one and young people can start their education with enthusiasm for what lies ahead and confidence to make their own way.

Carolyn adds: ‘I always encourage the young people that I work with to ask about diversity and inclusion and work-life balance at their job interviews. Be aware of the subject and ask how it works there. Be brave enough to ask how they will support you maternity or paternity and how they will support you in the most important thing they’ll do in their life if you choose to have a family.

‘You would hope that every well-run business would have a good answer for them and if they don’t, then come away and decide if that is really the type of place where you want to work.’

A benchmark supportive environment means the two women sitting across from me have an important additional job here, as role models for the young people who think this is not the industry for them. Jude says the Women’s Empowerment Network at Cummins gives them the strength and structure to drive that message home.

The WEN is a global network, but with very local representationwhere volunteers come up with initiatives including that recurring focus on education, but also sport and fundraising and making the most of events like International Women’s Day.

But for Cummins this is not just another superficial catchphrase. Everyone works flat out here to make the company successful, but there is never any question when it comes to supporting the huge amount of initiatives away from the production lines like school visits, WEN and the mentoring that is such a vital part of growing these young talents and developing character as well as skills.

Mentors meet with their younger colleagues on a regular basis to build confidence and tell their own stories as an example of what can be achieved by ambitious people who have a Cummins approach to work.

‘Trying to show there is a route other people might be able to follow was one of the reasons I joined the Network in Darlington,’ says Jude.

‘I play golf as often as I can and I see it all day in, day out on the courses and in the clubhouses, and it really makes me want to change perceptions. I find it nothing less than amazing that Cummins gives me the opportunity to do that.

‘We invite schools to the campus not only to show them Cummins and its engineering roles, but also to get women to think about roles that maybe they wouldn’t necessarily lean to because of their backgrounds and the stereotypes that are still out there.

‘You need to start talking to young people very early to start that sort of conversation, so we make sure we do a lot with primary schools where the pupils sometimes don’t know what an engineer is. We strip it right back, bring in some guest speakers with a lot of experience and insight and we break it down for them so they can see what is possible for them and that women have exactly the same opportunities that men do, with no barrier of any sort.

‘That’s how Cummins builds such a diverse workforce, where every opinion matters and everybody can contribute in different ways.’

‘We’re not just talking to them about roles that we’ve got, but we’re talking to them about diversity and equality so they can start to understand what that means and why it is important,’ says Carolyn.

‘We’re showing them that it’s important for girls to be represented, but also for boys to support them and be represented as well. For women to be equal, they need the boys to be allies as well, and they need to want women to succeed.

‘For us, we will teach them that this is a partnership rather than each half trying to fight it on their own.’

For Jude, every option for every employee should be the same – the perfect balance.

She tells me: ‘One of the key messages we can get out is “don’t limit yourself just because you’re female”.

‘At primary school children are probably not going to know what they want to do. It’s very rare that they do, and even if they do, the likelihood of them fulfilling that is very small.

‘But it’s just having that mindset to think don’t limit yourself because of your gender. Some people may tell you you can’t do that because you’re a woman and you’ve got no chance.

‘Ignore that – go as far as you want to go in life and don’t be restricted. Be bold and stand your ground and you could take a senior role at a place like this.

‘I’m a massive advocate for the business because I love my job. I think I would struggle in a mundane role where it’s just the same repetitive nature. What I have here is nothing like that because not only am I doing my role, but I’m able to do other initiatives as well that that are close to my heart.

‘I had a meeting with the person I am mentoring today and we talked about personal branding and how your personality and attitude goes a such a long way in the right environment.

‘Carolyn and I are just trying to get that positivity out there so that people are able to see that caring businesses do exist, with vision and goals that you can really relate to.

‘We’ve got this company as the perfect example of that and we think it is part of our job to let as many people as possible experience it and want to join us at Darlington.’

Over her 17 years at Cummins, Carolyn has seen change – and all for the good as attitudes and the Cummins standards that started in Indiana in 1919 with mechanic Clessie Cummins have kept pace with the technology and innovation the company is now globally recognised for.

She is right to raise her voice in support of what she has seen.

‘I have been very vocal about my journey in Cummins because when I started, there were only a few women on certain career paths and I watched that change so much and so quickly. This business really supported me when I went off on maternity leave and as I’ve raised my kids, I’ve been in roles that have allowed me to be flexible.

‘My boss summed it up when she simply asked me: “What do we need to do?”

So I was able to change my working pattern and that allowed me to have more time with my kids. I think there are a lot of people that worry about going on maternity leave and perhaps not even having a job to go back to. But that’s not the way we do things here. This is a secure, safe environment for anybody to find the work-life balance that benefits everybody, one that has evolved from an American company with American values to a global company with inclusive values.

‘We consider everybody’s cultures, we consider everybody’s differences and we work with them all to progress our business and their careers.’