Opinion

Can we inspire the best women to reach the top?

Emma McNab, business excellence manager, Taylor Woodrow

Creating clear and achievable career paths are critical to ensuring that the very best women join the industry and make it to the top, says Emma McNab.

We have a huge number of very talented women working across the diverse range of skills and disciplines in the engineering and construction industry. 

Yet to be successful as the demands on infrastructure grow, we need more. Our challenge is to find new ways to encourage this number to climb more rapidly. 

At Taylor Woodrow I am pleased to say that we are successfully increasing the number of female engineering graduates we recruit and have now boosted our overall number of female employees to 20%. And while still short of representing the overall UK workforce, is above the industry norm of 12%. 

"Research has shown that the most effective teams have a ratio of 40:60  men to women or vice versa. In other words, with the current levels of women in the industry we really are underperforming."

However our biggest challenge is to retain and develop these female employees throughout their careers. That means providing them with clear career paths in all disciplines and removing any suggestion of a glass ceiling so that this talent stays with the business.

And we have work to do – as a business and as an industry. For all our success in boosting the numbers of young women entering the profession with careers at Taylor Woodrow, we still only have a handful of women in senior positions. And that is a problem we all need to tackle.

Information is key. At our first Women in Taylor Woodrow workshop we learnt that, with the exception of engineering recruits, the majority had ‘fallen’ into construction as a career. Not only were they were not aware of the diverse number of roles available but also the opportunities were not something often discussed by careers teachers as being suitable for girls.  

At last week’s Inspiring Women, Building Britain event we attempted to tackle this problem by showcasing the less well known roles available in the industry. We showed that you don’t have to be out on site in a hard hat to work in the industry and that, in fact, you don’t actually have to have an engineering degree to succeed.

Fundamentally we intend to kick start to process of making the industry a more inviting place for women to work. Because we know that to succeed, we need to create a more inviting environment for women to build long term careers, removing traditional obstacles to career advancement and rethinking the traditional routes to senior positions.

"There are a huge number of large exciting infrastructure projects due to start shortly in the UK and we need the most competent and the best trained people possible on our teams to deliver them"

And of course, as a successful business why wouldn’t we do that? Bringing in more women, who traditionally have a more natural ability to collaborate and share, will only improve the industry as a whole. 

In fact research has shown that the most effective teams have a ratio of 40:60  men to women or vice versa. In other words, with the current levels of women in the industry we really are underperforming.

As a business - as a nation - we cannot afford for that to be the case. There are a huge number of large exciting infrastructure projects due to start shortly in the UK and we need the most competent and the best trained people possible on our teams to deliver them. 

And one obvious way to do that is to increase amount of talent available. By attracting more women into the industry – and retaining their skills – we can effectively increasing the talent pool by 50%. 

It is a strategy for which I really cannot see a downside. 

Emma McNab is business excellence manager at Taylor Woodrow

Inspiring Women, Building Britain

Emma McNab was a speaker at the Taylor Woodrow Inspiring Women, Building Britain event at the Institution of Civil Engineers on the evening of 13th May. 

This event aimed to inspiring women to join the industry and showcased a variety of roles in construction not just engineering in front of an audience includes clients, the supply chain, and GCSE and A’Level students.

Other speakers included Ann Collins MD of Conren and Beth West Commercial Director for HS2 and the question and answer session was moderated by Infrastructure Intelligence editor Antony Oliver. 

A view of the event from school careers advisor Philippa Shaw is here.

If you would like to attend or need more information please contact InspiringWomen@taylorwoodrow.com

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