Engineering a 50/50 gender split
Firm’s effort is attracting more women to a male-dominated field, writes Helen Twose
For the first time ever, next year’s graduate intake at engineering giant Aecom will reflect society’s 50/50 gender split. It took a concerted effort by the global firm’s Australian and New Zealand businesses to hit this target, especially given that many of the company’s specialisations still don’t attract large numbers of women at tertiary level.
Lara Poloni, chief executive of Aecom Australia and New Zealand, says it meant taking a different approach to graduate recruitment, including starting its on-campus recruitment a lot earlier in order to grab talent ahead of other firms.
It’s a world away from when Poloni joined the firm 22 years ago, in an office of 120 people with only two other women — one of whom was the tea lady — but it is a sign of progress in a diversity strategy that kicked off two years ago when she was appointed to lead the business.
Masses of reputable research was pointing to the strong business benefits of diversity in the workplace, she says.
“We know that ourselves through having diverse teams — it’s not just gender diversity but cultural diversity, diversity of working experience — it makes for a more successful project, drives innovation and it really brings different perspectives together, so we’ve been having a lot of conversations and understanding that for quite some time.”
Poloni says what changed when she stepped into her new role alongside a fresh executive team was an acknowledgement that there had been a lot going on in the marketplace and that meant diversity hadn’t been getting the attention it deserved as a key driver of the business strategy.
“Like many organisations, we were focused on the market, focused on projects and we needed to put diversity back on the table.” The key pieces to the strategy, she says, were ensuring a pipeline of women moving into senior leadership roles and taking a good look at pay scales to understand whether there were any gaps.
“Our strategy really demonstrates that it takes a lot of hard work, leadership commitment and financial commitment to give this the priority it deserves.”
Aecom was clear that it needed to set solid goals around getting more women in leadership positions, believing it was critical to ensuring it was a “workplace of choice” among women in a male dominated industry.
By the end of the year it plans to who, while feeling supported in her career, is concerned about chatter that she only got a particular role because she was a woman.
“You’ve got to say to these people that this is a framework for equality; it’s the right thing to do.”
It was fair to say the leadership team “got it” faster in terms of the benefits to the business and attracting the best talent, says Davidson.
“It is a really complex subject and it is important to walk people through the journey.
“I think we’ve done that well by highlighting the very clear areas where there is inequality.” Davidson says as a father of two girls, seeing a change in the industry is hugely satisfying and being part of the changes is even more so. “This is a journey,” says Poloni. “We’ve made a really promising start.
“I think it’s been welcomed by our staff.
“It’s definitely been an employment attractor for a lot of the young generation to know that this is an important business imperative for us and it is quite simply the right thing to do, but it has some demonstrable benefits in terms of the engagement of our employees.
“I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of our clients who have actually reached out to us and said ‘can you come in and actually help us and talk to our senior managers about how you embark upon this journey, how did you do it?’ and that then leads to a conversation where they say: ‘we want to do business with firms that share similar values to us, whether it’s a commitment to corporate responsibility or a commitment to gender equality, let’s have that conversation over and above the project stuff that we talk about’.”