Natasha Levanti, ACE Group Communications Executive explains the need for industry to adopt a diverse and inclusive culture if we are to address a sustainable workforce…
Professional consultancies and engineering companies no longer have excuses to avoid fostering a diverse and inclusive culture in today’s modern work environment.
The challenges facing the industry are well known. In the next decade, the engineering sector will have around 1.82 million positions that need to be filled, with a potential retention gap that would cost companies from £5.2 – £9.5 billion. Undeniably with such challenges, the potential pool of skilled labour must be expanded so as to ensure the industry continues to be able to meet all the infrastructure needs of the United Kingdom.
Recent reports have firmly established the existence of negative stereotypes regarding the current lack of diversity, and with the upcoming challenges requiring an expansion of the talent pool, diversity and inclusion has become a business imperative for the industry. Not only will improved diversity and inclusion address industry challenges, such is positively correlated with increased financial returns, improved creativity, and higher customer satisfaction.
Yet despite the need for industry wide actions to address challenges, there have been few forms of guidance for companies to successfully embed a diverse as well as inclusive culture.
Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE), a long standing industry voice, has addressed this need for industry guidance, conducting one-on-one interviews with over 30 industry leaders to isolate key business strategies for successful improvement of diversity and inclusivity in the workforce.
Launched on 21 January, the report ‘Diversity & Inclusion – marginal or mandatory?’ provides leaders with tangible tips based upon best practices and the experiences of industry peers. Setting the report apart from others, ACE’s report highlights ten key business strategies, providing guidance on how these can be implemented in businesses of all sizes, large and small.
Paramount to all ten key business strategies is leaders who spearhead change throughout all levels of the firm. With senior leaders leading the charge, all those who manage must fully embrace the ten key business strategies, or improvements will not be seen.
Thus fostering leadership and good management is the first of the highlighted strategies. Transformational leadership, put forth originally by James McGregor Burns, builds company-wide success upon the principles of inspiring others to take initiative, provide support and foster the skills of all within the organisation. While some firms accomplish this in part by D & I champions at all levels of the organisation, all participants agreed that senior leaders must commence this process, inspiring all to take up the call for improved diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Also included is building a foundation for both diversity and inclusivity, another crucial aspect to industry wide fostering of a sustainable workforce.
Industry wide, the current emphasis regarding diversity and inclusion is to achieve gender balance. While many companies believe that finding tools to balance gender in the workforce may then help to increase the representation of other underrepresented groups in the workforce, concentration on the needs of any specific underrepresented group also has its risks.
Identified through the experiences of industry leaders, focussing on specific diversity groups without also fostering a sense of inclusivity in the workforce risks fractioning the workforce. Through addressing solely the needs of those in a specific diversity category, with these groups defined differently by each firm, there will likely be individuals left who do not have access to this support, which can cultivate discontentment leading to increased turnover or employees directing animosity to those receiving support.
Inclusivity, through all employees receiving needed attention, allows the individual talents of all employees to be improved upon, thus bettering team efficiencies as a whole. This fostered in combination with separate diversity resources improves team cohesion, retention, and will yield the positive benefits seen in the business case for diversity and inclusion.
As stated by Dr. Nelson Ogunshakin OBE, chief executive of ACE:
“Our industry can, and must embed a diverse as well as an inclusive culture for positive, sustainable change within our workforce. Otherwise the industry will falter under the magnitude of challenges ahead. ‘Diversity & Inclusion – marginal or mandatory?’ provides companies from micro-businesses to large corporates with guidance to successfully improve their current performance in this area.”
With eight remaining business strategies for the improvement of a diverse and inclusive workforce, the Association for Consultancy and Engineering commits to positive progress by also creating a new diversity and inclusion hub available online. This online resource enables an expansion of the concise new report, featuring topical explanations, case studies, further best practice tips, as well as a wide range of external resources that will provide all businesses regardless of size with the necessary guidance to significantly improve the industry over time.
Dr. Ogunshakin believes that all companies should ensure that diversity and inclusion is made a priority in order to make businesses fully prepared for the upcoming hurdles, including but not limited to the skills and retention gap; “I invite all within our industry to start their journey towards better diversity and inclusion in partnership with ACE, because all of us have positive contributions that can be made, and results that can be achieved to move the agenda on.”
No longer are there excuses for firms to not seriously consider diversity, as well as inclusion, a business priority, and it is through sharing successful strategies that as an industry a prosperous future will be achievable.
ACE 10 Strategies for a Diverse & Inclusive Workforce:
- Foster Leadership & Good Management
- Sourcing & Promoting Employees
- Be Open About Diversity & Inclusivity Values
- Promote Flexible Working
- Benchmarking & Targets
- Utilise Internal & External Resources
- Build a Foundation for Both Diversity & Inclusivity
- Participate in Outreach
- Staff Communication of Strategies & Initiatives
- Encourage Open Dialogue
To download the report, ‘Diversity & Inclusion – marginal or mandatory’ or to utilise the many forms of guidance on ACE’s Diversity & Inclusion online hub, please visit: acenet.co.uk/d&I.
Natasha Levanti
Group Communications Executive
Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE)
020 7222 6557
