We were delighted to hold our highly enjoyable & thought-provoking Equality and Diversity seminar last week; which started by introducing the CITB Be Fair framework to the assembled audience. A straw poll conducted by Lucy Dixon, Director of See Things, at the beginning of her presentation indicated that only 30% of the audience were aware of framework, surprising considering it’s aim to assist businesses to address & adhere to the Equality Act 2010. Lucy went on to describe the framework, who can get involved and more importantly why they should.

Following up from our women in the workplace blog post several weeks ago by Heather Jackson (who has since been on BBC Breakfast – go Heather!) , we also welcomed back Janet Beckett who delivered a frank and engaging presentation (with a truly spectacular title I might add), “women are construction’s most underused resource”. Janet outlined her experiences of working in a traditionally male-orientated industry and what the percieved barriers are to women entering the profession, and how we overcome them.  Janet, in her own words “enjoys stirring up debate on Twitter” so give her a follow @carbonsaveruk and take her up on that!

Our storify which summarises the key points from the two presentations has been shared below. As with many Equality and Diversity events, there is never enough time to cover all the issues that need to be discussed but we do hope our seminar has given those attending (& following  from afar!) food for thought.

Save the Date!
Our next Constructing Excellence event will be KPI Excellence on 29th April and will include a presentation from CE Chief Executive Officer, Don Ward. This will be a great opportunity to learn about Constructing Excellence’s vision and how it supports delivery of the Construction 2025 strategy. Don will also talk about the value of Benchmarking & KPIs. Book here

Connect with key clients and partners at our Equality & Diversity breakfast on 25th March.

Our speakers for this event are

Addleshaw Goddard LLP, Sovereign House, Sovereign Street, Leeds, LS1 1HQ

(If you are using a satellite navigation, please use the following postcode: LS1 4BJ)

 08:00-09:30

Guest post by Heather Jackson, Chair and Founder of An Inspirational Journey

When asked to write about women in the workplace, my first thought was, I wonder how long it might be before the question is not about women in the work place but talent in the workplace.

Companies that are gender balanced throughout are more likely to treble company performance, quadruple innovative thinking and half-staff turnover intention. This is a fact proved time and time again by numerous business reports.

Women in the workplace in corporate UK stands at around 52% of the working population , with some 60% of graduates entering the corporate pipeline and just 6% reaching the executive.

A considerable amount of publicity and attention has been given to the lack of women at the top of corporate Britain.

The fact is in today’s market, the problem is not at the top, it’s in the middle. We still find too many women exiting companies, or allowing their career progression to stagnate once they reach middle management.

We need to start to implement sustainable solutions that help support women to continue and progress their careers. We need to help men to understand the reasoning behind why women allow their career progression to stagnate. We need to support female talent to succeed. Until this is successfully achieved the question around how long before we are asked to talk about “Talent” rather than “Women” in the workplace is still a few years away.

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An Inspirational Journey, is an organisation which supports organisations to drive forward performance through better balanced business and  sustainable talent management solutions. The company’s key focus is “Better Balance, Better Business” and works to positively influence and address the imbalance of talent that currently exists at the top of corporate UK and Europe with particular focus on middle management thought to the executive.

Delivered as a series of programmes, events and online activities including The Balanced Business Forum (formerly known as The Womens Business Forum and now recognised as the world’s first gender balanced leadership conference), The Pearls Programme, Ach-Eve Programme, The Two Percent Club  and  a social platform  AIJ.TV “Real Leaders, Real Conversations”.

Working in partnership with RBS, over the last few years the organisation has supported more than 1400 organisations on  this business imperative, and has some 1500 women currently on its programmes reaching out to a further 5000 aspiring leaders with its mentoring and support activities.

Heather is an active advocate in the media and acts as an advisory consultant to the government on issues surrounding women in business. She is a regular contributor to regional and national media including CNN, BBC, Sky News, and The Times.