New initiative set to support firms in recruiting and retaining female talent

The Major Projects Association's new initiative is aimed at supporting companies achieve better gender balance. MPA development director Manon Bradley explains

Manon Bradley
09 November 2015

Twitter FacebookLinkedIn

Print

Topics 

People & Careers

Diversity

The proportion of women in major projects has not changed much in the past decade. Whilst companies might well be recruiting significant numbers of women at apprentice and graduate level they are not staying in great numbers; they are not getting involved in major projects; and are not achieving leadership positions. This is a problem that the Major Projects Association has recognised and in response has launched the Gender Balance initiative through which they aim to provide support to tackle this issue through:

• Endorsement of the WISE Ten Steps campaign for greater gender balance.
• Sharing best practice through events held throughout 2016 on WISE Ten Steps themes such as Leadership, Recruitment, Retention and Promotion.
• The establishment of a new area of the MPA website which includes: signposting to networking groups; inspirational role models; discussion and awareness-raising via online blogs.
• Support for a significant piece of research on the topic of Women in Major Project Leadership being undertaken by Ashridge Business School.

The pipeline of major projects which the UK Government (alone) wish to deliver in the next decade requires 100,000 new entrants into this business. The global demand for experienced project delivery people is in the tens of millions between now and 2020. If we only recruit from our traditional sources we will fail to deliver these projects. We must try harder to recruit and retain female talent.

Even without the skills shortages we should be trying harder to engage women in our companies. All of the evidence from KPMG, McKinsey & Co, Grant Thornton, to name but a few, says that increasing the number of women on boards and executive teams leads to greater creativity, improved problem solving, better decision making and a better bottom line.

"The global demand for experienced project delivery people is in the tens of millions between now and 2020. If we only recruit from our traditional sources we will fail to deliver these projects. We must try harder to recruit and retain female talent."

Supporting this the MPA launch event was in two parts, chaired  by Anna Stewart, chief executive of Laing O’Rourke and by Simon Kirby, chief executive of HS2.  Both are board members of MPA and both are hugely supportive of the need to redress the balance.   The first part of the event was the formal launch of the initiative with presentations Suzy Firkin of WISE and Sarah Golding of Betchel – who outlined the initiative, the WISE ten steps and offered a case study of how best to engage with the process. 

This was followed by very lively debate on the topic: Men and Women, Equal or Different?  Female contributors to the discussion talked about the fact that merit will only get you so far, after that it’s who you know and how people perceive you – it is not a level playing field for men and women they said.  Women spoke of desperately wanting to be treated equally, the same as their male colleagues, to be judged on their performance alone – until they realised that this had never happened.  That bias, discrimination, glass ceilings and walls were barriers to fairness and equality. 

At the end of the evening Simon Kirby summed up that this event would not have taken place 5 years ago.  He is right.  It is not a topic that would have been encouraged.  Leaders would not have considered it important enough and women would not have wanted to speak up for fear of being labelled trouble-makers.  Sometimes a particular issue has its moment – for Gender Balance in Major Projects that time is now.

We invite you to join us in this journey by signing up to the initiative, working with WISE to help identify helpful steps, attending our events and sharing your own lessons. To learn more about how to sign up please email Manon Bradley via mpa@majorprojects.org.