Construction Sector Encouraging Female Applicants

AECOM Warning

There was some surprise this week when government figures were released showing that only 1% of apprentices are women. Out of 9’587 apprentices, only 52 were female.

One area where this gender imbalance is having a huge effect is the construction sector.

Last week, AECOM released a statement which included the following warning, “The construction sector in Ireland must improve gender diversity if it is to tackle the industry-wide skills shortage.” At the moment, men account for 90% of the construction sector’s employee’s.

Speaking Out

Speaking ahead of UK Construction Week, which runs from October 18^th at the NEC, Birmingham, Director, Nathan Garnett is encouraging more women to consider construction as a career. UK Construction Week is hoping to change the image of the sector and make it more attractive to female applicants. It is estimated that in Britain alone over 250’000 new construction jobs will be created over the next five years. This is a huge opportunity for apprentices and graduates. This is echoed by an Irish Director of AECOM, John O Reagan.

O Reagan believes that flexible hours, days worked and the option for working from home can attract women to various construction sectors. AECOM have set themselves a target of making 40% of their European staff women by 2020. Like the UK, the projection for Irish construction jobs is also high, and with over 80’000 new jobs expected to be created by 2020, O Reagan believes that it is only through diversity and overcoming previous biases that we will manage to fill these vacancies.

One innovative element of AECOM’s recruitment strategy is to raise the profile of its female employees in order to encourage others into the construction and property sector.

Career Profile

Casey Elsby, a crane operator with construction firm Laing O’ Rourke, believes that choosing a construction career path can be of huge benefit to women and will strengthen and diversify a person’s career profile. With women making up half of the overall career pool, the construction sector cannot afford to ignore such numbers based on the job vacancy projections currently being forecast.

How Good Communication Can Benefit Staff Retention

Employee retention can be a problem for businesses in every sector. Perhaps one of the most overlooked factors relating to this issue is the non-communication of a clear lack of vision on behalf of the employer. 

This absence of clarity can affect employees in a surprising number of ways. For example, foresight and job security are intimately intertwined and demonstrate a thorough commitment to a goal, creating a shared vision between both employer and employee alike.

In the words of renowned motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” 

Without clear and consistent communication, however, an employee can become disconnected to a company ethos and may end up feeling isolated within an unnecessarily fractured environment. In many cases the employer may be unaware of the employee’s feelings in the first place resulting in surprise when notice is given. Time is then spent trying to stem the loss of productivity and the further complication of having to source and appoint new staff who will need to receive induction and training.

This issue can be avoided by improving work-place communication which can be instigated and amended using a variety of tried and tested methods. Assigning a time for regular meetings, for example, is a logical and progressive tactic which can maintain contact on a formal level to begin with. However, personal check-ins and memos which encourage employee questions, as well as imparting information relating to what is expected of them, is a less used but equally valuable way to encourage ongoing communication outside of structured timetables.

An employee will remember when their employer refers to suggestions that they have made and will feel that they are being listened to when contributed input they have offered in the past is acknowledged and acted upon. In turn, a reciprocal relationship develops trust and security, factors which cement the bond between employer and employee. An employer who has demonstrated the ability to be open and available to discuss the ideas and experiences of employees is much less likely to lose staff in the medium term.

How to make your meetings more efficient

Meetings are a necessary evil in today’s busy working environments. They give the team an opportunity to meet and greet as a group and discuss important topics outside of their day to day roles and responsibilities. However, in order for meetings to be effective they need to be minuted, controlled, systematic and organised.

How many meetings have you attended that are just talking shop and go on for hours? This drives me crazy and they are such a waste of time and money. How many times have you attended meetings that are not minuted? How many meetings have you been too were people don’t bring a copy of the minutes or worse you know that the time hasn’t been taken to even read the minutes or made an effort to action any of their allocated items?  How many times have you been at meetings when the start time is just seen as a proposal and not respected as an official start time?

Getting tough

Simply, you need to get tough and take action, explain to the team what is expected of them in relation YOUR meetings going forward. Clearly identify/communicate the roles and responsibilities of each attendee. Communicate in advance the allocated duration of the meeting along with a start and finish time and explain that tardiness is compulsory.  Take minutes.  Ask people to ensure they close out each item allocated to them on time.  Ask them to bring a copy of the minutes with them to the meeting and when discussing items stick to the point and don’t allow digression. This will be a shock to the system at first but after a couple of meetings, and no doubt a couple of conversations with certain individuals your meetings will become more productive and actually more enjoyable for most!

In the initial stages thank people for attending and for being on time, congratulate those who have closed out his or her action items and don’t forget to discuss any other business.  Productivity is so important but do try to have some fun and be engaging.

Cultural Knowledge

For Multinationals, expatriates and lone workers through the advancement of transport, communication, information technology and reduction in flight costs in travelling abroad in recent times, taking a post in a foreign country or conducting business across foreign borders is a feasible growth opportunity for some and unfortunately a financial necessity for others. For the individual, whether you’re a practitioner of management, engineering, medicine, manufacturing, education or construction, your country of origin’s current economic situation need not be the be all and end all in determining the financial stability of your family or indeed be an over ruling factor in preventing your career advancement prospects.

However as easy as it may seem to get on a plane and start in a new company abroad, it has been identified through various studies driven by the growth in international business, that there is a need for cross culturaltraining.  Working in a foreign environment can be a difficult experience and a study by Buckley and Brooke in 1992 suggests that failure rates of the expatriate to be high for a variety of different reasons from both a professional and personal standpoint.  Expatriate failure can also have a negative monetary impact on the company, for instance it is reported that failure rates of expatriates has a reported $2billion per year negative impact on US multinationals.

Globalisation is here and now and having an impact on everyday business.  Modern managers at some point in their career may work abroad, but the skills required to manage abroad in a multicultural setting are extremely important.  You can study in advance theories on cross cultural management from theorists such as Hofstede, Schwartz, Trompenaars or R House but quite simply my advice would be before you go, take some time to learn as much about the culture and people as possible, contact colleagues on the ground and they will advise how best to adapt and what to expect when you get there, rest assured things will be very different.

Solving Work Related Problems Methodically!

There will always be times in work when despite best efforts things are just going completely wrong and not according to plan.  If you take the time out to study exactly what has happened, you will usually see a pattern to it and in that pattern is always a recipe for improvement or a signal to change direction and quick.

Root Cause Fault Analysis

9 times out of 10 what went wrong could have been avoided no matter how you dress it up.  In the manufacturing industry they use what’s caused Root Cause Analysis or Root Cause Fault Analysis (RCA or RCFA) which arose in the 1950’s out of a study by NASA to seek reasons as to why things went wrong at a fundamental level, at the root.  It’s a super tool and one that will benefit the whole organisation if used effectively.  You don’t just presume why things went wrong at face value, well you can but this is a sure way of ensuring they will keep happening. There is a technique to be followed that involves 12 steps from defining the problem, interviewing or data gathering, data mining, identification of a solution, implementation, effectiveness to standardising the solution. This is a powerful tool to master to close out issues permanently or at least to reduce the possibility of reoccurrence to a very minimum.

Helping you grow

Problems are put before us to enable us to grow.  No matter how difficult the lesson, there is always something to be learned from it.  Even if we don’t identify the root cause of a problem, just deciding to investigate the problem is a mammoth step in the right direction to mind-set improvement. Taking this step means that you are no longer saying it just happened, you are no longer saying what can I do about it, you are now saying that yes it happened but it bloody won’t happen again on my watch.  Conducting yourself with this mind-set is a key ingredient to success at work and certainly an important trait you must possess to lead.

Self-doubt

Self-doubt is that little voice that screeches us to a halt just when we are about to make a decision. Are you sure? have you made the right decision here? what will people think? is your business idea good enough? what if you fail?  We have all heard them, this process is normal and healthy but this self-preserving mechanism should never become debilitating.

Of course It’s extremely important when embarking on any new idea to think things through, to try and plan for all eventualities, but remember all of your ducks will never be in a row and sometimes we need to take that leap of fate to truly grow

Go with what you have, right now, just go, take the leap and learn how to fly on the way down Les Brown

Life is extremely short and we owe it to ourselves to explore every part of life, ourselves and be the best we can be in the time we have been given.  Self-doubt is fine, listen to it, embrace it, feel it, take on board its questions, act upon them if need be but then move on.  There is no such thing as failure, getting something wrong just means that you have not perfected your art form yet, it’s a learning process not a full stop. Instead see this unforeseen setback as room for improvement & growth.  Life’s way of telling you to practice more, study what went wrong, identify the lesson and take from it. 

When you approach life with this learning view and start to accept that things may not always go your way, we are reducing our fear of failure and thus reducing the power of self-doubt over us.  Remember, self-doubt is only one part of you and it doesn’t like risk taking even though some of the best decisions ever made have been made with incredible risk.

she was unstoppable, not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued on despite of them Unknown

Dealing with a difficult co-worker

I think it is safe to say that we have all encountered situations in our working environments of colleagues whose main aim in life seems to be to push our buttons and drive us crazy.  This can be quite annoying to say the least.  However, in more serious cases this constant annoyance can lead to stress, unhappiness at work and can ultimately result in an individual leaving employment because of it.

We all know some of these co-workers, they tell you everything that goes on in their personal lives, constantly complain, they are serial advisers, chatters & gossips, they correct your work continually, they argue with everyone.  Then there are the more serious individuals who are just arrogant and mean.  Most co-workers act professionally and are acceptant of our boundaries and do manage to get the hint when they go too far but some unfortunately do not and this requires a different more structured approach.

It might be an idea if you can’t avoid the difficult co-worker to approach the individual directly in a friendly & non-confrontational manner and explain to them that you find their actions uncomfortable to deal with constantly.  If this does not work or the situation deteriorates further, then approach the person you report to and explain your issue, again in a friendly non formal manner.  If this still does not work, then ensure you are recording every occurrence in a diary and formally report the situation to your direct manager and to the human resource department or to a member of the senior management team for them to resolve.

You will know yourself if the situation is serious enough to formally report and don’t be afraid to do so. Most of us work hard to earn a living and we should not have to put up with people giving us an undeserved hard time.  So don’t accept it and approach the individual first, 9 times out of 10 this friendly approach will be enough to resolve your woes, if not, then escalate.

Multicultural Management

Multicultural Management in the context of international business is discussed as a key attribute and a “success factor” for businesses, managers and teams in today’s globalised business arena (Kelley School of business, 2011, P.A Cassiday, 2005, Y.Y Kim, D P.S Bhawuk, 2008, R. Ma, D G. Allen 2009). For both Multinationals, expatriates and lone workers through the advancement of transport, communication, Information technology and reduction in flight costs in travelling abroad in recent times, taking a post in a foreign country or conducting business across foreign borders is a feasible growth opportunity for some enterprises and unfortunately a financial necessity for others. For the individual, whether you’re a practitioner of management, engineering, medicine, manufacturing, education or construction, your country of origin’s current economic situation need not be the be all and end all in determining the financial stability of your family or indeed be an over ruling factor in preventing your career advancement prospects (The Bent of tau Beta PI, Spring 2005).

The increase in expatriate workers in recent times has arisen from a combination of factors such as globalisation’s, labour shortages in many countries, as well attractive higher salaries and tax benefits available in some countries (HSBC Expat Explorer Survey 2012). Globalisation has created many opportunities (Mitroff, 1987, Eric T-S Pan, 2005) but having the ability to be able to manage within and adapt to a culturally diverse environment at grass roots level or at managerial level will impact on the level of success of this opportunity both for the company and for the expatriate.

In order for expatriates to be successfully integrated into a multicultural organisations, it has been identified through various studies driven by the growth in international business, that there is a need for cross cultural training “At the present time there is a greater need for effective international and cross cultural communication, collaboration and co-operation not only for the effective practice of management but also for the betterment of the human condition” (Culture Leadership and Organisation, the GLOBE study of 62 societies) of individuals in a multicultural context (Dr. Lee, Hung-Wen, M.G. Harvey, N. Miceli, 1999). Multinationals such as IBM, Heineken and Johnson &Johnson , colleges (S. Ledwith, D. Seymour, 2010) and training houses have had to quickly adapt to this evolution in multicultural management requirements and implement/offer specific cross cultural training programs to students and expatriates under many different titles such as “Re-patriation Training” (M, G Harvey, 1997, M Harvey, D Ralston, N Napier, 2000) “Cross Cultural Training” (A, Esther Joshua-Gojer, 2012) Multicultural Training, Diversity Training, Cross Cultural Leadership, and Cross Cultural Adjustment. Although success rates of these training programs is suggested as questionable, the main emphasis of these multicultural training programs is in the preparation of the individual to work effectively from a cultural perspective in their new place of work.

Even though there is an awareness in recent years on the importance of Multicultural Management (D, Shanahan 1996), many companies still “do not provide or give very limited cross cultural training” (S. Ghafoor, U. F. Khan, F. Idrees, B. Javed, F. Ahmed, 2011) as a result, expatriates are suggested as failing and experiencing the difficulties of working in cross cultural environments. Working in a foreign environment can be a difficult experience (Truax, 2008) and a study by (Buckley and Brooke, 1992, Christensen and Harzing, 2004) suggests that failure rates of the expatriate to be high for a variety of different reasons from both a professional and personal standpoint. Expatriate failure can also have a negative monetary impact on the company, for instance in the (Journal of Contemporary Research 2011), it is reported that failure rates of expatriates has a reported $2billion per year negative impact on US multinationals (S. Ghafoor, U. F. Khan, F. Idrees, B. Javed, F. Ahmed).

It is also important to point out that the challenges faced and negative impacts of working in a culturally diverse environment are not only experienced in business management, it is also well documented in education among teachers resulting in suggested “Diversity burnout” (Moshe Tatar, Gabriel Horenczyk, 2003), in psychiatry (A. Quesrishi, F. Collazos, M. Ramos, M. Casas, 2008), international project management (E. G. Ochieng, A.D.F. Price, 2010) as well as operations and manufacturing to name but a few. So in taking a position abroad and to be able to adapt efficiently and successfully within a culturally diverse environment in today’s world is becoming more and more the norm and seen as an expected prerequisite in both professional and personal development (The Bent of tau Beta PI, Spring 2005, N. Adler 1995).

The business world has evolved and the need to understand human behaviour in a cross cultural context by means of successful Multicultural Management is crucial in modern day management (G. Hofstede, 1991, F. Trompenaars, C. Hampden Turner, 1998, P. R. House 2004, Schwartz 1990), “All experts in international business agree that in order to succeed in global business, managers need to be able to respond positively and effectively to practices and values that may be drastically different to what they are accustomed to”(Culture Leadership and Organisation, the GLOBE study of 62 societies). What the above quote and introduction indicates is, Globalization is here and now and having an impact on everyday business. Modern managers at some point in their career may work abroad, but the skills of being able to manage abroad in a Multicultural setting is extremely important and not having those skills can have an impact for the individual and the company.

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