Women in Construction Week 2023

Tipping the gender balance

When you think of an industry dominated by men, construction is one that may come to mind first. Indeed, Women into Construction data revealed that currently only 16% of the construction workforce in the UK is represented by women, compared to 75% of women working in the education and health services industry.

This important week provides opportunity to raise the profile of the industry as one that is hungry for greater diversity and pushing hard for change. The number of women in construction is growing and there is a great number of rewarding opportunities available in industry for this percentage to continue to grow. Collectively, we must showcase this all year round to engage our under-represented female talent. I particularly like this year's theme; 'Many Paths, One Mission'. It celebrates the different journeys women have taken toward the same goal: strengthening and amplifying the success of women in the construction industry.

Getting more women in construction is a collective mission

It fits incredibly well with the employee experience we provide at Pick Everard, with multiple career routes available for early career talent, established professionals and career returners to pursue. As a multi-disciplinary employer, we’re proud to welcome women from all backgrounds to further their careers in their chosen field – be that Architecture, Cost Management, Building Services Engineering or Sustainability to name but a few. We’re a place where exceptional female talent works alongside exceptional female talent.

While progress is being made to address the sector’s record around diversity and equality, we accept that sticking points remain, not least regarding pay. Gender pay gap research shows that across some of the biggest firms in our industry women are still paid up to 26% less than men.

The latest McKinsey report on diversity demonstrates a lack of diversity at the top of construction firms too: while there have been improvements, only 16% of the women in construction work in executive roles and just 2% are company CEOs. We’re also aware that while the majority of women leaders do not find problems in their leadership ability and the recognition which is received, but gave the main challenges of working in a site environment (physically built around men) brings additional inconveniences to women in performing their role and that their experiences of a culture created around an ‘old boys network’ can make influencing and decision making much more challenging.

A hopeful future for women in construction

Still, these issues thankfully fail to deter lots of talented women from seeking work in the sector, with many finding great success in their chosen field. We’ve seen significant shifts in ways of working, with greater flexible and agile working opportunities now being available across a range of roles.

Female role models are also being spotlighted more to ensure that people are inspired by others enjoying successful careers within the industry and we’re seeing increasingly innovative attraction and development programmes introduced by a range of consultancies across a wide range of opportunities.

Our own actions

At Pick Everard, we fully recognise our own role in accelerating the drive for change and the drive for gender parity. We’ve made headway on developing a more inclusive candidate experience and we’ve reviewed our policies and people practices ensuring they are more accessible and attractive to female talent. We’ve also transformed our staff engagement and involvement – encouraging everyone to have a say.

This year at Pick Everard, we’ll also be bringing together a new focus group comprising of our female leaders and managers to share perspectives on what we can do to support the company to improve gender diversity even further. Outputs will include how we develop new pathways and gateways for women into the construction industry and support the progress of more high potential women into leadership positions.

We have so many great development opportunities already at our fingertips – such as our Springboard, RISE mentoring and Executive coaching programmes – and we’ll review these to see what more we can do to accelerate the position of our female talent.

I’m looking forward to our outputs as we progress further on this important journey. I’m confident that by developing and empowering our future female leaders, we will all benefit from new perspectives, more participative leadership styles and creative thinking, which in turn helps us to build a more inclusive society together.