This isn’t all bad for suppliers however – 47% of business leaders say they are offering some form of support to their suppliers to assist them in having a greater CSR. There is also a new AI based company called whatimpact who are also working to make better CSR more sustainable and easy to attain for corporations. Using AI, they match charities and corporations who align on values and ideals. This allows corporations to efficiently and proactively give to charity and better serve their communities.

Many workplaces now have ED&I networks or other places where people can discuss inclusivity issues amongst their peers. These networks allow fellow employees within a company to gain a greater understanding of the issues faced by underrepresented groups and become allies to their cause. This can result in improved wellbeing in the workplace, improved communication between employees, and greater support for underrepresented groups when making their journey upwards in the workplace. ED&I networks can also utilise company resource to have important conversations with the people at the top and effect change by being organised within the company in this way. Networks help to encourage the conversation both ways, giving top executives the space to ask their colleagues and staff how they are doing and if they are facing any issues, and ensure employees feel safe to come forward with any concerns.

Gender Diversity

Companies like Sodexo, where 20% of their security team are female (rather than the usual 9%), are proactive in creating a diverse team, and show clear benefit from doing so. One benefit they state is a possible profit increase of 10-15% where the ratio of women to men in managerial positions is 40% to 60%. Yet, according to a survey by PwC UK for POWERful Women of the top 80 most significant UK energy employers, “more than two-thirds of [those] companies have no women in executive director roles – the same as last year”.

Women retraining into FM may feel daunted by more gender imbalanced teams and may therefore not attempt to go into the industry at all. Sodexo have created multiple schemes and projects that target women at all points of life, whether school leavers, established career professionals, or current and ex-offenders. They allow women the space to gain the knowledge they need for the FM roles, surrounded by other women and support from the company. Each of their programmes works to highlight the breadth of roles available at Sodexo, as well as in the wider FM sector.

Another security company with a strong policy on gender equality is Expeditious Services who have a 12% female security staff, and a head office where 85% of their workforce is female. They have implemented a flexible and agile working culture which helps women fit into the security role. Their flexibility as a company allows people to take agile shifts around caring duties, education commitments, and partner working hours. This flexibility allows more women to consider roles with Expeditious Services. They then go further, getting to the very basics of ensuring people feel pride in themselves and their work by providing well-fitting uniforms that look professional. They also have a lone worker protection procedure for all staff which means that staff on site are called hourly by account managers to check up on them, making them feel safe and cared for.

They also attempt to recruit from outside of the security sector, bringing in talent from across a range of businesses, and looking more at transferrable skills. This allows them to pull from a more diverse pool of candidates. They also support defined plans for career progression within the organisation and sector, allowing more people to fulfil their potential in the business.

Mitie have been recognised for the third year running as one of the UKs top inclusive employers by Inclusive Companies. This recognition follows Mitie’s 2020 Social Value Report which launched their Mitie Girls Can initiative. This scheme allows women working for Mitie to complete technical engineering apprenticeships to further their education and role within the company. This kind of training allows more women to engage with facilities management and become part of a company working hard towards diversity, equality, and inclusion. In 2020 they achieved their target of increasing women in STEM roles by 20%, which works towards their larger equality and diversity strategy.

As part of their equality and diversity strategy, Mitie have endorsed the Ten Steps WISE campaign who focus on gender balance in STEM, starting from educating women on the attractive vocations they can have in STEM, to ensuring that STEM companies have gender balanced boards. They have a proven track record of helping companies improve their culture, policies and recruitment methods to be more diverse through the Ten Step programme. With this partnership, Mitie hopes to again improve their diversity after increasing hiring of women into STEM roles in their business in 2019 by 20%. In 2019 they also made half of their Board members female. This inclusivity and diversity stands to benefit the business in the long run.

Inclusion for Social Good

Many FM and Construction companies are also focusing on bringing in prison leavers or veterans. Many of whom can struggle with reintegration into society and without job opportunities their self-worth is greatly challenged. Prison leavers in particular can be vulnerable to reoffending and falling back into their old way of life without the promise of a stable future. Sodexo are working to combat a lack of diversity in security and FM through their SheWorks programme which helps female offenders approaching release see that they can be employed after leaving the prison system. For International Women’s Day 2021, Sodexo held a special virtual open day in two women’s prisons that had women from all over the company explore their roles and career paths with the offenders. The hope is that the programme will lead to women gaining confidence to apply for roles and skills training in all sectors after release, but particularly opening their eyes to employment opportunities in FM. This is “part of [Sodexo’s] social impact pledge and commitment to creating local career pathways, [through which they aim] to fill 5% of [their] job vacancies with prison leavers and those with an offending background by 2023”. This will hugely impact women leaving the criminal justice system and successful implementation will reduce reoffending rates.

Last year, ISS “announce[d] the renewal of [their] Corporate Covenant Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) [Gold Award], which has been validated for a further five years”. The renewal acknowledges the outstanding support ISS shows to veterans, service leavers and their spouses through the JointForces@ISS programme which helps these underrepresented people find employment. The Gold Award is given when employers exceed their pledge as a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. This programme is part of an array of inclusion strategies that work to ensure people get long term career opportunities at ISS and that they feel comfortable working there. Their strong support of diversity and inclusion is predicated on the idea that the diversity of their workforce is a key competitive advantage.

Diversity beyond Gender

Sodexo are looking to further increase the diversity in their staff in partnership with Generation Success. The 14-month mentoring programme hopes to bring 40 diverse young people into the sector and show them the breadth of roles available. This programme will also benefit the coaches mentoring the new recruits, as they are enrolled on a coaching apprenticeship. This kind of mutually beneficial programme is great for upskilling a company’s workforce whilst nurturing new talent and helps to future-proof the company and the workforce.

In order to better support underrepresented groups and give them and their allies in the workplace a voice, Atalian Servest have launched their Creating Harmony, Respecting Others and Making Allies (CHROMA) platform which aims to support the networks for physical & mental health awareness, race, ethnicity & faith, and LGBTQ+ employees. CHROMA will allow employees a way of communicating their issues, leaders of the individual networks have been given board representation. This is an example of how executives in the company can show that they want to hear the problems within the company and are willing to fix them. By including people from underrepresented groups at the top, they feel they may be able to influence for the better, and help themselves be better supported and represented in their own company. As Kelly Howell puts it, “CHROMA is just one element of our long-term investment in D&I. By empowering our colleagues, and giving them a voice, I believe they will shape not only their future but also that of our business and the wider FM industry”.

Further to Go

Many FM companies have improved their company policies and culture over the last few years to become more inclusive, however there is a long way still to go. A recent survey by Emtrain shows that “three in five employees do not feel that they can be their authentic self, or that they belong in their workplace” and “only 53 per cent of people rate their workplace culture as “healthy” in the area of diversity and inclusion”. These results show that more needs to be done in terms of changing culture from the top down to allow people from underrepresented groups feel more like they belong in their place of work. FM organisations need to be robust in standing by their employees from underrepresented groups, and ensure that they have a dynamic and critical view of their own ED&I policies to ensure they are fair and are working to best protect and support everyone. They can also review hiring and promotion practices and assess the levels of diversity across their executive and management teams in order to ensure that they are leveraging the talent they already have, and better understand where change needs to be made.

300 North are the Facilities Management recruitment specialists providing permanent, temporary and interim solutions to the UK Facilities Management, Mechanical & Electrical and Construction sectors. Get in touch to find out how we can help you with your recruitment needs by visiting our website home page or calling us on 0113 336 5161.