Diversity: A driver of business improvement within the UK construction sector?

The 'Respect for People' (RfP) working group of Rethinking Construction identified seven action themes within their report 'A commitment to people – our biggest asset'. One theme concerned the need to diversify the workforce, to which was attributed a range of significant business performance benefits including, enhanced innovation and creativity, increased workloads, and an expansion of the customer base. In common with the other RfP improvement areas, Rethinking Construction developed an associated 'toolkit' for diversity; a practical checklist and scorecard that can be used to implement good equal opportunities and workforce development practices, and benchmark performance. Despite the undoubted importance of diversity to improving respect for people in construction, it has been a problematic area in which to engage construction companies and to induce positive change. In particular, it has proved difficult to secure the commitment of small-medium sized companies (SMEs) in the evaluation trial of the toolkit. This paper reports on a research project commissioned by Rethinking Construction and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) to evaluate the effectiveness of the diversity toolkit and to establish why construction companies have thus far been unwilling to embrace the toolkit and the need to improve the industry’s workforce diversity. The paper explores employer perceptions of the diversity issue and explores the toolkit’s relevance, effectiveness, usability and impact. Interviews were carried out with 20 companies involved in the trial programme, many of which are smaller firms. Suggestions are provided as to how the practical utility of the toolkit can be improved so that it helps to mainstream diversity as an integral aspect of improving the performance of the sector.