Redressing the balance

Four years ago Paul Hodgkinson, chairman of Simons Group, caused a mild stir by setting an impossible-sounding target for his company: to have a 50% female workforce within 10 years.

In the macho world of construction and property development, he admitted, this was loony, maybe suicidal. Even the Royal College of Surgeons set their sights more modestly, shooting for a 10% female headcount by 2010.

But he was determined. Women are good for business, he said, especially the construction business. The dawning for him came when he hired a male au pair and noticed that while his kids started to excel in sport, they become slobby. Men and women bring different talents, and Simons Group was missing out.

“When a group of men get together,” he wrote in Building, “they tend to be very competitive, physical, loud and sometimes ugly. They can achieve single direction objectives, but tend to steamroller objectors and weaker members. Put in a more liberal mix of women, and then men will change their behaviour.

“Women tend to be better at finishing things off, at juggling lots of different issues, and at helping the team to work better as a whole,” he added.

Typically (for a man), having conceived his plan, he delegated the job of bringing it about to a woman, appointing well-known consultant Sandi Rhys Jones FCIOB as non-executive director, responsible for implementing the so-called 50:50 Vision.

So how’s it going? We caught up with her last month to find out.

On one hand, they’re going to have to get cracking if they want to hit the target. When Rhys Jones took up the post two-and-a-half years ago, women accounted for 13.5% of Simons Group staff. The latest count put that figure at 18.8% — a definite improvement, but not exactly the step change required. On the other hand, profound changes have taken place at Simons, changes that Rhys Jones argues will pave the way for a greater proportion of women, if not a 50:50 split.

So what’s she been up to? First, she got all the women together for a day to brainstorm. That was an important, because minorities can feel isolated, and getting them together is a great way to boost confidence.

That group of around 20 women – project managers, quantity surveyors, designers, pre-construction staff, human resources people and administrative support – then split into three teams, and each spearheaded research in a particular area: career development, the working environment at Simons and, crucially, improving client relations. The first group investigated working with colleges, new graduates and rationalising routes of progression. The second focused on flexibility and work-life balance issues. (It came up with the idea of a helpline for families where one of the parents was working away, so there was someone to call if you needed a plumber or childcare.) The third group focused on building better bridges to Simons’ clients, many of whom were large retail firms, like Boots Plc, with women playing a role in construction procurement.

The will to empowerment

This group met quarterly for breakfast meetings, at which two women at a time would describe their roles in detail. This gave the women visibility in the firm, boosted their confidence as speakers, and identified new “rising stars”.

Women-only events caused controversy, but Rhys Jones says you have to create an environment for a minority to feel empowered.

It worked. “Not only was it an opportunity to socialise and build friendships,” said one participant, “it was an opportunity to share ideas and information. I felt really enlightened and ready to take on the world.”

Another said: “I suddenly realised that two of us, by demonstrating knowledge and experience, were able to change the thinking of the rest of the group – we became leaders!”

One of the most important initiatives in the 50:50 Vision project has been a mentoring scheme that matched women from Simons to women from Simons’ clients. The scheme, called JIVE, is actually a European-funded career programme designed for women in construction, engineering and IT. Think of it: in a stroke, Simons is helping women develop, building deeper relations with clients, and getting the EU to pay for some of it! Five pairs went through the scheme, ending this spring.

For instance, Barbara Cotton, the head of non-retail purchasing at Boots, was mentor to then senior contracts manager June Harvey.

“She challenges my thinking and by her skillful questioning makes me consider issues more objectively and from different perspectives,” Harvey said at the time. “She has also introduced some practical new management tools and thinking to my repertoire.”

The mentoring scheme proved so successful Rhys Jones envisages 12 pairs in the next run, including men.

This is all very good, ground-preparing stuff, but Simons’ is still a long way off its 50:50 target. Rhys Jones admits this is true but is sticking to her strategy of making Simons Group a top place to work, attractive to men and women, rather than starker, interventionist policies which could fall outside the law (see ‘Discrimination or Encouragement’, below).

And anyway, in an important sense, 50:50 Vision is working, she argues. The women in Simons Group may still be few in number, but they are edging closer to the core of the company in terms of influence. Male bosses are seeing what they can do as they grow in confidence and profile, and they’re getting involved in the way the company is run. For proof, Rhys Jones points to the last Leadership Day, an annual event that brings people with important roles together for a strategy session. In the first one she witnessed only two women were in the room. The last one had 10.

She adds that some staff are uncomfortable with singling women out for targeted support, but Rhys Jones sticks to her guns.

“If people are good, male or female, they’ll be all right. You hear this all the time. But the cream won’t rise if the environment is wrong – it’ll go off.”