Build women's technical skills for a just transition

Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)

The company is an automotive manufacturer with 25,002 employees as of year-end 2025, with vehicle production and engineering operations in Türkiye and Romania.

The automotive sector is being reshaped by electrification, software and digital manufacturing at the same time, and the skills the industry will need are shifting faster than the talent pool is adapting. Women are exposed to that shift twice over: they are under-represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and they are also under-served on the practical steps that convert study into employment — confidence, role models, career transition support and access to networks.

The risk the company identified was therefore not representation alone. It was that as digital and green transition accelerates, women would fall behind on competence, confidence, role models and career transition simultaneously, which would narrow the talent pool available to the industry precisely when it is expanding.

The programme builds on the group's commitment to gender equality in technology and innovation under the UN Women Generation Equality Forum; the corporate reach target uses 2022 as its baseline, and the detailed impact assessment covers 2024-2025 delivery. It is delivered with contributions from the group's corporate foundation and coordinated with a social impact consultancy.

It was designed as a data-driven social impact platform rather than a single training course, on the reasoning that a talent pipeline is built across life stages — from secondary school through university to working women and women returning after a career break — and that a one-off intervention at any single stage does not produce a pipeline.

Location of the initiative: Türkiye, delivered across 81 provinces

The model rests on three pillars: holistic empowerment, awareness for women, and awareness for children. Each pillar addresses a different stage of the same pathway, so a participant can enter at the point that matches her situation rather than at a single fixed entry point.

Holistic empowerment is the deepest layer. It combines technical training in coding, data analytics and digital skills, English language training aimed at the level required for international careers, a leadership academy, structured mentoring, and career preparation covering job search, application and interview practice.

Awareness for women is the broad layer. It reaches women at different ages and career stages through role model sessions, personal development content and orientation to the technology field, and it operates as the route through which participants discover the deeper programmes.

Awareness for children takes the model into secondary and high schools, where STEM simulations let students experience technical professions directly rather than hear them described.

The distinguishing feature is not the curriculum but the operating structure. Seventeen partners deliver the programme against a shared impact objective and a shared measurement language, with each partner attached to a specific transformation need — personal empowerment and leadership, software, artificial intelligence, data, English, career preparation, digital transformation, role model visibility, and early-age STEM awareness. Two ministries connect the school-level work to public policy and to the national school network.

The company's own employees are inside the delivery model, not outside it. Volunteers act as mentors, trainers, speakers and role models, which converts the engineering and leadership experience held inside the business into the content participants receive.

Impact measurement is built into the design rather than added at the end. Short awareness and personal development programmes are evaluated at the reaction and learning levels of the Kirkpatrick model; longer technical, English and mentoring programmes use scale-based pre- and post-tests; and a social return on investment analysis, initiated in 2025, is being developed to express social value in financial terms.

Figure 1: Participants receiving their certificates at the close of a job readiness training programme under the holistic empowerment pillar

Figure 2: A STEM simulation session for secondary school students under the awareness for children pillar

Sustainability Impact

Climate

The programme does not act on the company's Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions, and no greenhouse gas reduction is claimed for it. Its climate role is that of an enabler on the workforce side of the transition: the automotive sector is being reshaped by electrification, software and digital manufacturing at the same time, and the technical skills that shift requires are the constraint this initiative addresses.

The enabling mechanism is the supply of that capability to a decarbonising industry. Training in coding, data analytics and digital skills, together with the English language, leadership, mentoring and career preparation elements, prepares women to enter and progress in the engineering and technical roles on which electrification and digital manufacturing depend. The effect on emissions is therefore indirect and sits with the employers those participants join rather than in this company's own inventory.

The detailed impact assessment covers 2024-2025 delivery, while cumulative reach is reported for 2022-2025. By year-end 2025, the programme had reached 115,079 women and girls, including 73,103 participants during 2025. Skill development, job-search behaviour and placements are programme outcomes; they are not quantified greenhouse gas reductions.

No quantified greenhouse gas impact is currently available. The programme is therefore presented as a workforce enabler for a just transition, not as an emissions-reduction project.

Social

The corporate target uses 2022 as its baseline, while the detailed social-impact assessment covers 2024 and 2025 delivery.

Reach exceeded the plan ahead of schedule. The programme reached a cumulative 115,079 women and girls over 2022-2025, passing the 100,000 target for 2026 early. In 2025, 73,103 participants were reached; the published training table records 1,881 activities across the programme's four training categories.

The deeper result is capability, not attendance. In technical training, participants showed an average relative increase of 48 per cent in coding, data analytics and digital skills between pre- and post-programme technical assessments (a relative increase, not a percentage-point change). The assessments were prepared and administered by the training partners; sample sizes vary by programme, ranging from 102 to 380 participants at pre-test and from 65 to 191 at post-test. The professional competence score rose from 7.6 to 8.8.

Employment is not the programme's primary KPI. In post-programme evaluations, 139 participants reported that the technical training had contributed to their employability, and 18 of them reported obtaining a job or internship with the programme's contribution. These results are self-reported; the split between jobs and internships and the follow-up period are not available from current sources. Sixty-one per cent of participants moved into active job or internship search.

Among 1,307 women in the 2025 English training, self-reported confidence in English job interviews rose from 4.4 to 6.3 out of 10, and confidence in applying to roles requiring English rose from 4.9 to 6.9; a 56 per cent positive change in application behaviour was observed.

In the Leadership Academy, 94 per cent of participants had never previously received leadership training, which confirmed a real development gap rather than a duplicated offer. At the end of the programme, leadership knowledge gain was measured at 9.4 out of 10 and leadership confidence at 9.3 out of 10.

Mentoring produced change in both directions. Among mentees who responded to the survey, career clarity was rated 9.2 out of 10, confidence 8.8 out of 10, and motivation to work in STEM 8.5 out of 10. Mentors' perception of their own mentoring skill rose from 6.4 to 8.3, and their gender equality awareness from 6.2 to 8.4, so the company's own engineering and leadership population was changed by the programme as well as the participants.

The high-school programme engaged 22,196 ninth- and tenth-grade students in 84 schools across 27 provinces, enabling them to experience nine STEM professions through simulations. Across the wider awareness programme, more than 70,000 people, including women and girls, were reached.

Business Impact

Benefits

The primary business return is a wider and better-prepared talent pool for an industry moving into electrification, software and digital manufacturing. The programme reaches women at secondary school, university, early career and post-break stages, which addresses the pipeline at every point at which it currently narrows.

The second return is internal capability. Employees who serve as mentors improved their own mentoring skill from 6.4 to 8.3 and their gender equality awareness from 6.2 to 8.4, so a programme funded as social investment also functions as leadership development inside the business.

Among the 139 participants who said the technical training contributed to their employability, 18 reported obtaining a job or internship with the programme's contribution, and 61 per cent moved into active job or internship search. These are self-reported outcomes rather than tracked placements, but they indicate movement from training into labour market activity.

Employee engagement and employer positioning benefit as well: volunteering as a mentor, trainer, speaker or role model gives engineering and leadership staff a visible route to contribute, and carries gender equality awareness into the corporate culture rather than into a policy document.

Because impact is measured with pre- and post-tests, Kirkpatrick levels and a social return on investment approach, the investment can be defended with evidence at board level, which is what allows it to be renewed rather than treated as discretionary spending.

Costs

The cost base is programme funding from the company together with contributions from the group's corporate foundation, plus coordination and impact measurement carried out by a social impact consultancy.

Employee time is a genuine and recurring cost. Mentors, trainers, speakers and role models are drawn from engineering and leadership populations, and 271 mentors supporting 473 mentees represents a substantial commitment of skilled hours that has to be planned against operational workload.

Coordinating 17 partners has an administrative cost of its own — aligning needs analysis, module design, application and routing, pre- and post-tests, satisfaction surveys, focus groups and regular follow-up meetings into a single measurement language is what makes the results comparable, and that alignment is not free.

Digital infrastructure for online delivery, and the continuous follow-up required to keep online participation from decaying, are ongoing operating costs rather than one-off set-up costs.

Costs are contained by using partners' existing delivery capacity instead of building an in-house training function, by routing participants to modules on a persona basis so that content is not delivered to people who do not need it, and by reusing the same measurement instruments across programmes.

Total programme budget, annual operating cost and volunteer hours have not been made available for publication.

Impact Beyond Sustainability And Business

Co-benefits

Participation by two ministries connects the school-level work to public policy and to the national school network, which gives the model a route to scale that a corporate programme could not build alone.

The partner ecosystem gains as well. Seventeen organisations working to a common measurement language means each partner receives comparable evidence about its own contribution, which raises the quality of the sector's social impact practice beyond this programme.

Early-age STEM awareness has a long lag but a wide base:22,196 students experiencing nine different STEM professions can make technical careers more visible before subject choices are made.

The next phase, planned for 2026, deepens the model with a social return on investment study and with modules on artificial intelligence and career journeys, leadership in STEM, and digital transformation readiness.

Potential side-effects

A heterogeneous target audience is the central design tension. Secondary school students, university students, working women and women returning from a career break need different content, and serving them all through one platform risks diluting each offer. This is managed through persona-based routing so that participants enter the module matched to their stage.

Multi-partner coordination introduces the risk of inconsistent quality and duplicated effort. It is managed through clear allocation of roles, a shared measurement language and regular follow-up meetings.

Online delivery makes continuity of participation the main delivery risk, since drop-off between modules is easy and invisible. Digital infrastructure and structured follow-up are used to hold participants across a sequence rather than at a single session.

There is also a measurement risk worth naming: reach figures are the easiest number to grow and the least informative. The programme's response is to publish reach alongside skill gain, job search behaviour and placement, so that volume cannot stand in for outcome.

Typical Business Profile

The model suits large employers in technically demanding sectors — automotive, manufacturing, energy, technology — that face a skills transition, that need a wider talent pipeline, and that hold engineering and leadership expertise in-house which can be contributed as mentoring rather than purchased as training.

It requires a corporate communications and sustainability function able to hold a partner ecosystem together, a social investment budget, and an employee volunteering route that has management backing.

It is most relevant where a company can connect to public education authorities, because the school-level pillar depends on access to the national school network rather than on the company's own reach.

Approach

1. Define the gap before designing the offer: Establish where women fall out of the technical pathway — representation, competence, confidence, role models or career transition — and design against those specific failure points rather than against a general diversity objective.

2. Structure the programme in layers, not as a course: Build an awareness layer to attract, a capability layer to deepen technical and language skills, and a career and role model layer to convert capability into employment, so participants can enter at the stage that fits them.

3. Assemble partners by function, not by availability: Attach each partner to one named transformation need — personal empowerment, software, artificial intelligence, data, English, career preparation, digital transformation, role model visibility, early-age STEM — so that coverage is deliberate and overlap is visible.

4. Bring public authorities in at the design stage: Engage the education and social services ministries so that school-level delivery reaches the national network and stays aligned with public policy, rather than depending on individual school relationships.

5. Put employees inside delivery: Recruit staff as mentors, trainers, speakers and role models, and support them with a briefing and matching process, so that internal engineering and leadership experience becomes the programme content.

6. Fix the measurement method before the first cohort: Apply reaction and learning level evaluation to short awareness programmes, scale-based pre- and post-tests to long technical, language and mentoring programmes and, once the necessary data are available, add a social return on investment methodology to express social value in financial terms.

7. Measure behaviour, not only attendance: Track job and internship search behaviour, placement, career clarity and confidence alongside reach, so that the programme is judged on what participants do afterwards.

8. Run a joint improvement cycle: Use needs analysis, module design reviews, application and routing data, satisfaction surveys, focus groups and regular follow-up meetings with all partners to revise content between cohorts rather than at the end of the programme.

Stakeholders Involved

• Project leads: Strategic direction, stakeholder management and corporate integration are coordinated by the Corporate Communications and Sustainability Leadership function. The programme is positioned as a social investment tied to the company's strategic priorities and owned at senior management level, rather than as sponsorship or donation, which is what allows it to be planned across multiple years and measured against corporate objectives.

• Company functions: Social investment, corporate communications, human resources, sustainability and the relevant business units work together on content, delivery, measurement and communication. Employee volunteers are the operational backbone: staff serve as mentors, trainers, speakers and role models, and human resources supports the job and internship readiness element, which is what connects the training pathway to actual placement.

• Main providers: The group's corporate foundation provides the strategic framework and institutional support. A social impact consultancy manages coordination, impact measurement and the social return on investment approach. The delivery ecosystem is made up of civil society organisations and specialist training providers covering personal empowerment and leadership, coding and software, artificial intelligence, data, English language, career preparation, digital transformation, entrepreneurship and role model visibility, and early-age STEM awareness. Each is engaged against a defined transformation need rather than as a general training supplier.

• Other: The Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Family and Social Services support delivery in secondary schools and high schools and connect the model to public policy and to the national field network. Participation is not limited to delivery. Partners take part in needs analysis, module design, application and routing, pre- and post-tests, satisfaction surveys, focus groups and regular follow-up meetings, which creates a joint decision-making and continuous improvement mechanism across private sector, public sector, foundation and civil society.

Key Parameters To Consider

The corporate reach target uses 2022 as its baseline; the detailed impact assessment covers 2024 and 2025 delivery data. Impact measurement is coordinated by a social impact consultancy.

The evaluation method is matched to programme length: reaction and learning levels of the Kirkpatrick training evaluation model for short awareness and personal development programmes, and scale-based pre- and post-tests for longer technical, English and mentoring programmes. A social return on investment analysis began in 2025 and remains in progress.

The monitoring framework tracks five headline indicators: 1. total reach; 2. technical skill gain; 3. professional competence development; 4. self-reported job and internship placement; and 5. two-way mentoring effect.

Scale is achieved through modularity. Because the three layers operate independently, the model adapts from secondary and high school students to university students, working women and women returning after a career break without redesigning the platform.

Implementation And Operations Tips

Measure behaviour change, not reach. Reach is the number most easily grown and the least informative; the figures that changed the internal conversation were the 48 per cent technical skill gain, the movement of 61 per cent of participants into active job search, and the 18 self-reported job or internship outcomes.

Expect the mentoring programme to change the mentors. The rise in mentors' own mentoring skill from 6.4 to 8.3 and in their gender equality awareness from 6.2 to 8.4 was a second-order result, and it is what makes the case for the programme internally as well as externally.

Check whether the gap you are filling is real before building the module. Finding that 94 per cent of Leadership Academy participants had never received leadership training confirmed the programme was not duplicating something already available to them.

Fix the measurement language before recruiting partners. With 17 partners, comparable data is only possible if the instruments are agreed at the start; retrofitting a common framework across organisations that have already begun delivery is far more difficult.

Go down to early ages if the objective is a pipeline. Reaching 22,196 students across 84 high schools in 27 provinces builds early awareness before later education and career decisions.