A DIVERSE APPROACH

摘要

As skills shortages continue to bite at all levels in the construction industry, the importance of recruiting and retaining staff from a more diverse talent pool is now more than a moral question - it is a driving economic imperative. According to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, women make up just 16% of the construction industry's workforce, with the number of women employed flatlining while employment overall has been rapidly rising. There is less data on ethnic diversity, but the most recent reliable survey, from 2009, suggests that people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds make up just 4% of the sector's workforce, compared with 10% of the total population at the time. However, with construction's reputation as a particularly "masculine" sector, and slow progress being made at increasing the level of female students qualifying in science and engineering subjects, addressing the imbalance is a tough ask, requiring considerable effort on the part of employers. We asked a selection of employers that have worked hard to improve the diversity in their workplace, what was the single most effective thing they'd done in the last few years to increase workforce diversity.