Agents, landlords, developers and housebuilders have all recognised their shortcomings when it comes to balanced workforces. Here, some of the main firms outline their commitments to improving the balance and closing the gender pay gap.
We also include links to their full gender pay gap reports.
Colliers International
■ Introducing a sponsorship scheme for women
■ Strengthening flexible and agile working practices
■ Reviewing parental leave
■ Improving “keep in touch” and returnship programmes for those on maternity leave
■ Exploring unconscious bias training
Tony Horrell, chief executive: “We recognise that like many businesses, women are under-represented at the most senior levels. We believe the successful implementation of our plans to attract and recruit more females will increase our talent pool of women and make a difference.”
READ MORE: Five ways to close the gender pay gap
Barratt Developments
■ Committed to the 30% club (minimum of 30% women across its board)
■ Improving maternity, paternity and flexible working
■ Launching a career development programme for female employees including a mentoring scheme
■ Launching a working mums’ recruitment campaign
■ Working with Built by Both, industry wide initiation launched in 2016 to encourage young women into the housebuilding industry
David Thomas, chief executive: “We are committed to improving the male/female ration across our business and increasing the number of women in senior management positions and we have an action plan in place to achieve this. We will continue to work hard to close our gender pay gap and ensure that we build a diverse, inclusive and attractive working environment.”
Bellway Homes
■ Introducing diversity/equality training for all managers
■ Developing targeted recruitment campaigns focussing on women
■ Focus on the number of women in senior roles as part of succession planning
■ Pilot a returnship programme to encourage talented women back into the workplace
■ Identify mentors to develop future female talent
■ Take remedial action where possible where barriers to progression for women exist
■ Ensure equal gender representation for all entry-level positions
■ Instruct recruitment partners to diversify recruitment pipelines and have gender-balanced shortlists for all senior roles
■ Make it easier for women to identify internal opportunities
■ Provide hiring managers with more visibility on the skills and capabilities of women across the organisation
■ Sign the Women in Finance Charter
■ Intensify support for working parents
■ Ensure all new managers are trained to manage diverse teams and to identify and reduce bias and lead inclusivity
■ Encourage men to take shared parental leave, use flexible working options and champion greater gender equality
Diversity is a business imperative. It fosters better decision making, enriches our talent pool and drives innovation. A cornerstone of our diversity agenda is gender equality. We take this issue very seriously and we are committed to making sure that we become more diverse, at every level of our business. We believe the future of our business depends on it.” – Andy Martin, BNP Paribas UK chief executive
Cala Homes
■ Aim to have women in 33% of senior management roles by 2020
■ Focus on succession planning
■ Individual coaching and mentoring
■ Require all recruitment partners to support the need for increased diversity and to show that they have done so through talent sourced
■ Aim to have balanced shortlists in disciplines where there is a balance of genders in the market
■ Deliver unconscious bias training to interviewers
■ Aim for 50:50 gender balance in graduate trainees and apprentices by 2020
■ Consider individual requests for flexible working arrangements
Alan Brown, chief executive: “We must sustainably increase the diversity of our teams, bringing diversity of thinking to all areas of our business. We recognise that homebuilding as an industry has a lot of work to do to encourage more females to join and stay within this exciting and dynamic sector.”
Carter Jonas
■ Reviewing all recruitment processes to adopt methods for encouraging more female applicants
■ Providing guidelines to all recruiting managers on avoiding unconscious bias
■ Equality and diversity training for all current and new staff with refreshers on a bi-annual basis
■ Enhanced maternity and paternity benefits
■ Refocused flexible working policy
■ Ensuring a gender balance on management development programmes
■ Trained mentoring network
■ Investment and development of an apprenticeship programme
Mark Granger, chief executive: “Carter Jonas recognise that diversity is important to any organisation’s culture and fosters an environment which increases productivity and supports all employees to fulfil their potential…We are committed to improving gender balance within our firm and to ensure we are inclusive and open to diversity within our culture.”
CBRE
■ Providing flexible working practices
■ Developing Talent on Boards programme
■ Women’s Network
■ Delivering next generation programmes
■ Providing coaching for women returning from maternity leave
Ciaran Bird, UK managing director: “This isn’t about how well CBRE has done against some of our competitors because, let’s face it, we’ve still got a long, long way to go and we are not even at the average yet.
“And to get to zero is not something you can put right tomorrow but our goal is to absolutely get there. The fact that we are where we are I put down to more than 10 years of work and we’ve been very focused, particularly over the past two to three years.”
Listen to Bird discuss the firm’s diversity commitment below:
Grosvenor
■ Launched group policy on equality, diversity and inclusion with each of its operating companies tasked with developing new initiatives to support the approach
■ Committed to making sure recruitment suppliers understand requirements for a diversity of candidates on any shortlist
■ Committed to making sure all those involved in recruitment and selection decisions receive relevant equality, diversity and inclusion training
■ Monitor data from recruitment/selection decisions to make sure no unconscious bias has taken place
■ All new employees to get equality, diversity and inclusion training in their induction programme
■ Introducing enhanced family friendly policies, including flexible working, equal and enhanced shared parental leave.
Mark Preston, chief executive: “Over the coming months we will extend our analysis to include our people based in our international operating companies to better inform our efforts to improve our gender pay performance on a global basis and in doing so, help build a more equal, diverse and inclusive place to work.”
GVA
■ Have gender-balanced appointment panels
■ Use enhanced IT to deliver gender-neutral selection screening
■ Create a “working together” forum to collect and action views from staff
■ Encourage agile working
■ Introduce structured resource, talent and succession planning
■ Introduce learning programmes that proactively nurture female talent
■ Use unbiased language in all policies, procedures and collective communications
We are aware of the scale of gender imbalance that exists at senior levels in our company, directly causing a significant gender pay gap.”
Gerry Hughes, chief executive: “Over the last 12 months, we have been working hard to tackle this imbalance at grassroots by taking initiatives to encourage more women into the business at graduate intake level.
“As a result, this year, we achieved gender balance at entry level, meaning that we will start to see more and more women coming through the ranks of our business to eventually become our future leaders.”
Listen to Hughes discuss the firm’s pledge in the podcast below:
Hammerson
■ Increased target for female representation in senior roles from 30% to 35%
■ Improved maternity and shared parental leave policies
Knight Frank
■ Creating four development boards to enable an “ambitiously diverse” variety of staff to have influence and gain the appropriate experience to join the main commercial board
■ Improved maternity and shared parental leave
■ Ultra-flexible, return-to-work terms
■ Step up efforts to hire staff from non-traditional real estate backgrounds
Alistair Elliott, senior partner: “Knight Frank is committed to improving gender diversity and it is a priority for our group executive board. There is no doubting that there is a structural issue for the real estate sector to address and we are among the leading groups in our industry supporting initiatives to help bring about change.
“While we continue to lead change, it will take a number of years to redress the balance and we will work with RICS and other relevant bodies to do what we can to speed up the process.”
Read more on how Knight Frank is changing its old boys’ club image
Lendlease
■ Introduced leadership behaviour assessments
■ Promotion of flexible working practices
■ Enhanced parental leave with equal entitlement, irrespective of gender
■ Unconscious bias training
■ Established diverse assessment panels
■ Insist on no all-male recruitment shortlists
■ Delivery of talent and succession programme
■ Piloting a female development programme that includes mentoring and networking events
Dan Labbad, chief executive: “If we fail to take proactive action, both as a company and as an industry, then we will all suffer as a whole. By attracting more women to the industry and supporting their development into senior roles, we can all realise the benefits greater diversity brings.”
McArthurGlen
■ Make sure that flexible working is available at all levels throughout the business
Julia Calabrese, chief executive: “Our efforts to improve opportunities for women and all our talent will be shared beyond the UK borders to ensure we address this challenge everywhere we do business.
“There is more to be done but we have been and continue to be committed to addressing this important matter. Our values drive everything we do and this will be no exception. I am confident that working together we will make progress in closing the gap.”
McCarthy & Stone
■ Working with Home Builders Federation to improve image of construction industry
■ Introducing more family-friendly policies as part of an “Employee Voice” programme
Clive Fenton, chief executive: “If each gender were represented equally by job level our mean hourly pay gap would reduce by 87% and our bonus gap would disappear altogether. This shows that our biggest opportunity to address the gender pay gap is through encouraging and promoting female talent.”
Montagu Evans
■ Appointing a diversity champion for every department
■ Formally tracking diversity data through recruitment, promotion, talent development and retirement
■ Unconscious bias training for all partners
Rob Bower, managing partner: “We recognise that the number of women partners we have is low. We are confident that by putting initiatives in place to attract, retain and promote women, over time our female partner numbers will grow.”
Morgan Sindall
■ Reviewing approach to returnships to support employees to return to work after career breaks
■ Exploring opportunities to enable employees to take career breaks
■ Explore agile working initiatives
■ Deliver e-learning training in inclusivity
■ Monitor pipeline of talent
■ Establish sponsor and mentoring programme
■ Establish development programmes for all employees
John Morgan, chief executive: “Unfortunately there is no quick fix to the gender pay gap, especially within the construction sector where there is under-representation of women as a whole. We are committed to implementing our long-term initiatives and to ensuring, in the meantime, that all employees continue to be paid equally and fairly for the roles that they are in.”
Click here to see all the companies that have filed their gender pay gap figures
Persimmon
■ Encourage applications from females for apprenticeships and trainee roles at all levels and in all disciplines
■ Support and participate in Home Builder’s Skills Partnerships
■ Encourage regional businesses to adopt an open attitude to flexible working, part time contracts and job sharing
Redrow Homes
■ Introduction of a mentoring scheme for female trainees
Safestore
■ Maintain active succession planning strategy that considers the ability of internal candidates before recruiting externally
■ Ensure that criteria for selecting team members for training opportunities is non-discriminatory
■ Deliver workplace behaviour workshops to ensure maintenance of a safe and inclusive working environment
■ Complete a detailed gender analysis of recruitment data to understand how to improve demographic gap
■ Provide unconscious bias training to recruiting managers
■ Maintain fair and robust reward structures and processes
Savills
■ Unconscious bias training
■ Coaching and mentoring programmes
■ Improve maternity leave policy
■ Shared parental leave paid equally for both parents
■ Return to work maternity coaching programme
As a service industry our people are our best asset and we want to invest in and support our best people in order to provide the best service to clients.We have made good progress on diversity over the past few years and are committed to continuing to improve going forward.” – Mark Ridley, Savills’ UK chief executive
St Modwen Properties
■ Introduce a new resourcing process looking at all stages from attractions through to induction to increase diversity among both internal and external appointees
■ Flexible working policies will be introduced aimed at supporting diversity and inclusion and will be developed by employees
■ Launched People Matters Group to ensure policies meet current and future diversity and inclusion needs
■ Enhanced maternity and paternity pay
■ Using competency-based interviews
■ Recruitment partners selected on the basis of their ability to provide gender balanced shortlists
■ Increase apprenticeships and trainees
■ Introduce a graduate scheme by 2020
Mark Allen, chief executive: “The property sector as a whole has historically been male-dominated, with women representing only a small percentage of the workforce.
“Our gender gap figures are in line with this historical context but we are committed to ensuring better gender representation at all levels of the organisation. We are already putting measures in place to address the gap and ensure that everyone who works for St Modwen can be confident they enjoy equal reward, opportunity and support.”
Taylor Wimpey
■ Create a female talent strategy to further develop and progress high potential women
■ Deliver inspiring leadership programme
■ Work with universities with more diverse student demographics for graduate recruitment
■ Identify additional methods to attract more women onto apprenticeships schemes
■ Use female role models to inspire the next generation of talent to apply for roles in traditionally male occupations
Pete Redfern, chief executive: “At Taylor Wimpey, we strongly value diversity in the widest sense and aim to be an inclusive employer in order to attract, retain and promote employees from all backgrounds, regardless of their gender, race, religion, age or sexuality.
“This approach contributes to creativity and innovation in our workforce, widens our talent pool, helps us to better reflect our customer base and, ultimately, improves our decision-making.”
Value Retail
■ Embrace flexible working
■ Deliver unconscious bias training
■ Raise awareness of diversity and inclusion policies through workshops and training
■ Introducing an internal careers portal where all employees are able to view and apply for internal job vacancies
■ Developing a mentoring programme and upward mobility training programme
■ Conducting thorough review of maternity, paternity and shared parental leave policies
Westfield Europe
■ Sets annual diversity targets that are linked to the UK management committee’s performance objectives
■ Requests that for all senior roles, at least a third of the candidate list is female
■ Develops female specific training programmes
■ Focus on wellbeing
■ Shared parental leave
■ One-on-one coaching pre and post maternity leave to aid a return to work
Peter Miller, chief operating officer: “While we have put processes in place at Westfield to attract, develop and retain a more diverse workforce, we recognise that much work remains to be done.
“At Westfield we regard this as a fundamental part of our everyday activities, at the heart of which there is a genuine commitment to deliver positive and impactful change to diversity in our business and across our industry.”
Willmott Dixon
■ Pledge to achieve gender parity by 2030
■ Established gender diversity steering group
■ Delivering unconscious bias training to management teams
■ Introducing agile working
■ Using different forms of media to advertise roles, i.e workingmums.co.uk
■ Piloting a career returner programme
■ Female focussed marketing materials
■ Enhanced maternity and paternity pay
■ Mentoring programme
It’s not about showing favour to one gender over another, but is about ensuring that our company aligns with our long stated aim that there should be no better place to work to enjoy a rewarding career” – Rick Willmott, chief executive
Countryside
■ Implementing a programme with a key focus on developing women in and encouraging women to join the construction industry
■ Introducing a group-wide quarterly people review process
■ Reviewing maternity, paternity and flexible working practices
Intu
■ Increasing maternity pay provision to above statutory requirements
■ Establishing an enhanced minimum rate for all staff above the national living wage
British Land
■ Founding supporter of Pathways to Property programme
■ Introduced flexible working
■ Female mentoring programmes and maternity coaching
■ Developed employee-led diversity networks
Emma Cariaga, head of operations for Canada Water: “One of the things that we’re most proud of that we’ve done in the last year is the position we’ve taken on shared parental leave. I think we were one of the first out the block on ensuring that we had shared parental leave for men and women in our business.
“That is important because that goes to the heart of addressing why women leave the industry and the more we can encourage men in our business and then across business more generally to take shared parental leave, the less burden it becomes on it being just for women.”
Listen to Cariaga talk about the importance of supporting shared parental leave:
■ Launched diversity and inclusion programme, Inspire
■ Undertaken a review of factors that restrict the number of women in senior positions and what steps are being taken to tackle the causes
■ Expand flexible working scheme across the business
■ Included checks and reviews within promotion and compensation processes to ensure decisions are fair
■ Delivered dedicated module within manager academy programme to train managers on how to have good career development conversations with their teams
■ Launched a UK-wide mentoring programme
■ Unconscious bias training
George Roberts, head of UK & Ireland: “In a world now characterised by uncertainty and change, we need new thinking and bold ideas that challenge and grow what we can do for our clients every day.
“For this reason, we are clear that we need to attract and retain the very best talent, from all backgrounds and of any race, religion and gender.
“However, we have far to go. Our gender pay gap is too wide – the result of too few women in senior roles, particularly in fee-earning roles. We are challenging the way we do things to address this imbalance, which has been a persistent issue for our industry.”
READ MORE: C&W says its pay gap is too wide
JLL
■ All directors to receive unconscious bias training
■ New initiative to support women going on and returning from maternity leave
■ Creation and appointment of new director of diversity and inclusion
■ Senior level endorsement of shared parental leave
■ Introduced gender-balanced shortlists for recruitment
Chris Ireland, UK chief executive: “Within the real estate industry we still have a lot to do, but we are focussed on making a difference. We want to be open and transparent and make sure that we are doing all that we can to close the gap.”
READ MORE: JLL reveals its gender pay gap
Lambert Smtih Hampton
■ Opening up opportunities for women to join our graduate scheme who don’t have a traditional real estate background
■ Partnering with Young Enterprise – a national youth charity – to introduce and educate those of school age about career options in property
■ Encouraging more women to choose property as a career via our active talent acquisition programmes
■ Investing in dedicated programmes to ensure more women progress into senior roles
Ezra Nahome, chief executive: “A legacy bias towards a male dominant work-force is a challenge the industry must collectively address.”
Pic credit: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock
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