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36| RICS Awards THE INDUSTRY CAN’T AFFORD TO BE COMPLACENT WHEN IT COMES TO DIVERSITY By Tracy Flannigan FRICS , RICS spokesperson in Northern Ireland As I write this, the RICS Headquarters team are busily preparing for a major conference which will be full of practical examples and case studies on how employers across the UK are embracing inclusivity. It is RICS’s second annual Diversity and Inclusion Conference and, as statistics show, it’s a highly pertinent and entirely necessary subject to be both exploring and implementing. Of the 80,000 qualified surveyors in the UK, only 14% are female. Ethnic minorities, disabilities, socio-economic diversity, all are lacking in a profession where the average member is currently a 58-yearold white male. The statistics in Northern Ireland specifically will be no better. But things are changing– there are pockets of good practice and, more importantly, there is a growing understanding of the business need for a more diverse workforce. Companies with greater female board representation have been seen to outperform the mono-culture boards financially: with 42% greater return on sales; 53% better return on equity and 66% higher return on investment capital[1]. And then there is the issue of skills shortages, which is having a considerable impact upon the property and construction sector. Lack of trained people is forcing many companies to put aside their assumptions about the “right” candidates for the job, and so they are beginning to seek out talent in new places. There has been progress made with some good practice emerging from Northern Ireland. A reflection of this is shown in RICS’s recent appointment of two new female board members and it has also been growing its pool of female spokespeople. Furthermore, last year, RICS also held a visible women event in Belfast at which senior women from the construction and property sectors engaged with senior female journalists on the issue of diversity in the sector. While the general consensus was that we had come a long way, the group also acknowledged that there was much still to be done to address the imbalance and be a more attractive profession for new talent pools. So, as the professional body for the industry, what else is RICS doing to help? We established that the question is not simply one of opening up to a wider talent pool, but of retaining these non-traditional candidates once they are recruited. Indeed recruitment is just the beginning of the work to reshape the workforce, the key issues rapidly become how to retain staff who don’t necessarily see role models in the senior management, nor opportunities for promotion and career development. To combat this RICS introduced the Inclusive Employer Quality Mark to effectively and practically address these issues in the long and short term. My company, Colliers International is one of a growing list of organisations signed up. Employers pledge their commitment to adopting and seeking out best practice with six principles: • Leadership and Vision commitment to increasing the diversity of the workforce • Recruitment – engage and attract new people to the industry from underrepresented groups; best practice recruitment methods • Staff development– training/promotion policies that offer equal opportunities for career progression • Staff retention – flexible working arrangements/ adaptive working practices • Staff engagement – an inclusive culture where all staff engage with developing, delivering, monitoring and assessing the diversity and inclusivity policies • Continuous improvement – continually refreshing and renewing the firm’s commitment to being the best employer; sharing and learning from best practice across the industry Over 90 companies have signed up to the Inclusive Employer Quality Mark so far, and the number is growing weekly. It is good to see so many making a genuine commitment to change. The future is looking much brighter than the past. To learn more about RICS Inclusive Employer Quality Mark or the forthcoming conference, go to http:// www.rics.org/uk/ about-rics/responsiblebusiness/inclusiveemployer/ Tracy Flannigan is Director of Professional Services at Colliers International. Tracy became a Fellow of the RICS in January 2013. She was also the first female arbitrator in Northern Ireland and sits on the panel of arbitrators maintained by the President of the Law Society of Northern Ireland.
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