The latest webinar in FIDIC’s ongoing 2024 series of online events took place on 15 October 2024, with an expert panel of speakers looking at how best to build diverse and inclusive companies in the engineering, construction and infrastructure sector by focusing on how to attract, retain and promote people to ensure that businesses are truly sustainable for the future.
The webinar, Building more diverse and inclusive companies. Diversity best practice for attracting, retaining and promoting people, organised by the FIDIC Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council, offered a number of effective and practical measures to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion across businesses in the engineering consultancy sector.
The expert panel of speakers at the webinar was led by webinar chair, Joost Merema, partner at PRO6 managers and chair of the FIDIC Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council. Speakers included Tina Gaardsøe Albrechtsen, global director of equality, diversity and inclusion at Ramboll, Charlotte Downes, programme director of the Diversity Agenda initiative in New Zealand and Katharine Mottley, vice president of tax and workforce policy at the American Council of Engineering Companies.
Introducing the webinar, Prashant Kapila, managing director of International Consultants and Technocrats in India and also a member of the FIDIC board, said: “Attracting, retaining and promoting a diverse pool of talent is crucial for companies in our sector, especially given the diverse and ever-evolving challenges facing the sector. More than ever before, the engineering, construction and infrastructure sector needs to become more diverse and inclusive to meet the challenges of the increasing diverse world in which we operate.”
Kapila said that practical and workable EDE&I strategies were absolutely essential if companies in the sector are to compete with other industries and professions and avoid losing out in the battle for talent. He said that some of the key questions being covered at the webinar included: How do we attract talent into the industry? What can the industry do to attract more women, minority and underrepresented groups into its ranks? What are the best practice methods and strategies that are working and how can these be implemented by companies? And once we have attracted people, how do we retain them in our businesses?
Opening the webinar, Joost Merema, partner at PRO6 managers and chair of the FIDIC Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council, said that the topic under discussion couldn’t be more timely or topical for the sector as it was key to the very sustainability of the industry itself. “Building diverse companies is not just a moral imperative, it is a business imperative,” Merema said.
Tina Gaardsøe Albrechtsen, global director of equality, diversity and inclusion at Ramboll, spoke about her company’s diversity journey. She made the point that leadership was crucial in this area. “We had to be able to say why we were undertaking a DEI programme and what this meant for the company,” she explained. It was also important to include all key stakeholders in this process. “Building a DEI programme can bring difficult conversations to the fore, but this is a good thing,” she explained. Ramboll had developed a global programme that was sensitive to local needs and one that was embedded into the company’s leadership approach, with good communications to the fore at all times, Albrechtsen said.
Katharine Mottley, vice president of tax and workforce policy at the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), spoke about the Diversity Roadmap Report tool that they have developed to help their member firms in this area. She said that they always kept in mind that ACEC had companies of different sizes and scale as this had an impact on the DEI programmes they would develop. Mottley also stressed the importance of leadership and said that the approach was not uniform across the board. Employee recruitment and retention strategies were also key to measure, she said. “One of the things we see in the US is that government bodies and the public sector are more likely to ask about companies’ DEI policies and there are regional differences, with differing approaches at state and regional level,”
Next, Joost Merema, chair of the FIDIC Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council, spoke about some of the latest initiatives of the council. A current focus in the development of FIDIC policy in this area was to take into account regional differences and not to dictate what was good or bad in the DEI field. There were three specific areas of emphasis currently being looked at – gender equality, ethnicity and religion. In all these areas, FIDIC was keen to encourage firms to go beyond the legal minimum requirements, Merema said. “Our approach is not to tell people where they are going wrong, but to empower companies by offering advice on what they can do better, based on what others are doing,” he said.
Charlotte Downes, programme director of the Diversity Agenda initiative in New Zealand, spoke about the FIDIC Guide to Inclusive Meetings which aims to provide a set of guidelines to facilitate meetings which involve all voices in an organisation and make people feel comfortable about airing their views and having a say. “Setting clear meeting aims and objectives and having an agenda is important for ensuring that people can bring their best selves to a meeting,” she said. This was particularly important where there were neurodivergent voices around the table, Downes said. “It was also important that meetings were organised in a way that respected appropriate times for colleagues, not outside of work times. Understanding how your teams work and respecting it,” was key she said.
Speakers took a deeper dive into many of the above issues during the Q&A part of the webinar and shared their experiences and insights. These included advising attendees on how to address staff resistance to new ways of working where a crucial start would be to get people to recommit to an inclusive approach that created ‘safe spaces’ for people to fully contribute in the workplace.
The next webinar in FIDIC’s 2024 series of events takes place on Tuesday 29 October, Capacity Building and Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap in Infrastructure, will launch the latest in FIDIC’s series of State of the World reports. The report will explore skills, upskilling and capacity building in the infrastructure sector and focus on present skills shortages and gaps while also addressing the question of which skills will be indispensable in five, ten and 15 years’ time.
Watch the full webinar recording on the link below.