Graham Watts: Let’s face it, we have an image problem

All the age-old practices of our industry make it harder to attract and retain women and ethnic minorities. Remove them, and everyone benefits, says Graham Watts

Last summer, when the Construction Industry Council reviewed the data on the diversity of its member institutions, we found that none of them had a particularly strong record on employing women or ethnic minorities, although the Landscape Institute and Royal Town Planning Institute fared better than most.

The fact that there was relatively little data collected in the first place – even on basic questions such as age, gender and ethnic background – was itself surprising. In other aspects of daily life we’re regularly asked for such information, so the fact that major professional bodies hadn’t done that showed they were out of touch with the needs of today.

We’ve now published a follow-up report, Building the Future: How women Professionals Can Make a Difference, with recommendations to improve employment practice, and we plan to study the subject further in the coming year. The whole issue of diversity and fair access to the professions is one that pulls all the member institutions together, so it’s an appropriate issue for the CIC. And it’s not an issue that can be tackled in isolation – the barriers to diversity that exist today are built out of the rigid practices and traditional thinking that also affect our competitiveness, margins and image.

The construction sector has to wake up to the fact that everyone – from the government to the average parent – sees it as an old-style industry with old-fashioned jobs. It’s seen as an industry with rogue traders, that doesn’t employ people fairly or give them proper sick leave and holidays, that uses different tax set-ups as a shield for bogus self-employment. All these things paint the industry as different, difficult and old-fashioned, and they also inhibit diversity.

So it’s important that we make the industry more comfortable for all current staff and new entrants. In the 30 years I’ve spent working in construction, I’ve found that there are two specific modes that come along in cycles of four or five years. There’s the period when companies are looking for work, followed by the period when they’re looking for people. Hopefully, that time will come round again soon. But if we’re only recruiting from a limited pool, in terms of gender or ethnicity, then we’re missing out on more than 50% of the employee market.

When we looked for examples of good practice, we found several companies that had broken the mould – employers such as Mott MacDonald and Mace are proving that it’s not rocket science. Yes, there are some issues with site-based work, such as the temporary offices and travelling distances, but they’re not as constraining as the conservative part of the industry would have you believe.

Employers and managers should think about the gender balance of the next integrated team they put together – a different mix might prove more innovative. Flexible employment practices suit many individuals and can work well with the project-based nature of the industry. We can make general improvements to site facilities and employee healthcare, and make sites suitable and comfortable for a wider variety of people, not just white men from a British background.

We also need to recognise ingrained habits that can be damaging. Recently I spoke to the chief executive of a large construction company which in many ways was an enlightened employer. But he’d just discovered that when women in the company went on maternity leave, their access to the computer system was revoked automatically by the HR department. So they lost their right to access emails and information, and were made to feel that they’d left the company. Of course, he quickly changed the system.

Thirty years ago, it was incredibly uncommon to see a woman on a construction site. That’s changed, and is continuing to change, and we shouldn’t lose sight of the progress we’ve made. At the CIC, we’re not talking about setting unrealistic targets, but we do want to see year-on-year improvements. Eventually, those small improvements will add up and the end result will be a more diverse and sustainable workforce.

Graham Watts is chief executive of the Construction Industry Council