Diversity is an opportunity not a problem to solve, says Rachel Credidio, group people and transformation director at Aster Group, and she argues that the sector needs to think differently about diversity if it is to solve the broader challenges it faces.
This year’s International Women’s Day in March was another timely reminder that while great strides have been made to improve diversity across the UK, inequality is still present in many areas of society.
While the property sector is making huge strides, it’s still not the most diverse industry. For the most part, men still dominate boards and senior representation by black and ethnic minorities is low. While diversity is not about meeting arbitrary quotas, it’s evident that many businesses don’t reflect society as a whole. We should be aiming to create a level playing field for all.
Thinking about gender alone, the property industry has some work to do. Housing associations tend to do better on gender balance than businesses in the private sector because of their more progressive approaches.
At Aster we’ve worked hard to make sure female representation cuts across our organisation and isn’t confined to certain departments – we’re firmly against the old-fashioned view that some functions are more or less appropriate for men and women.
We’re proud to have 50% female representation on our Executive Board and our gender-balanced approach to recruitment is encouraging more women to join at work placement and apprenticeship levels. Our commitment under The Aster Way – a set of principles in which we work by, sees us celebrate diversity throughout our business and welcome different social, cultural and economic perspectives and experiences.
Our accreditation from Mumsnet has also acknowledged our enhanced maternity and paternity policies ensuring that both women and men can build families with more support from us.
Flexibility has also been key to supporting this shift. Our approach to work means that our people don’t have to be at their desks in the office. We know our people can do their best work while also able to carry out other life commitments.
We’re proud of the results of this work so far – particularly in reducing our gender pay gap, which is less than the UK average and we’re taking steps to minimise it further still. But we recognise there’s a need to do more and it’s not just Aster; the sector as a whole needs to think more broadly about diversity.
It’s been proven that having a mixture of backgrounds leads to better business decisions. The sector as a whole faces huge challenges and improving diversity could help us. We need to build more, offer better services, engage with customers more effectively and deliver homes that our communities need.
Together, we need to encourage people from all walks of life to consider a career in property. We must ensure that people of all backgrounds have opportunities to influence decisions. To do this, we need to think differently about diversity in talent acquisition and retention.
At Aster, for instance, we’ve signed up to the government Disability Confident scheme to ensure we build a more inclusive culture. Our commitment to listen to employee voice means we actively seek to listen to the voices of all our colleagues, from all roles and backgrounds, meaning our work is informed by the wide range of perspectives that a diverse workforce offers.
Social demographics are an equally important part of the diversity agenda too. Hiring only university graduates means that a huge collection of people with different backgrounds are underrepresented in the sector. We’ve reviewed all our roles internally and challenged ourselves to think about whether people need university-level qualifications to do our jobs, for instance. We removed it as a requirement for many of our roles, and it’s helping ensure that people who haven’t followed the traditional school-university-work route can start and develop their career with us.
We in the property sector should feel ambitious about doing more than just getting the basics right. As well as improving gender balance, and doing so without relying simply on quotas, we need to make sure that diversity looks beyond what is skin-deep to create equal opportunities for everyone.
If we can reflect the diversity of society more closely, we can make better decisions. Having people in our businesses from all walks of life will help the sector understand the different backgrounds in our customer groups. And, having people who can bring different viewpoints to the table and challenge us means that we’ll be able to build more robust businesses for the future.
This is going to become even more critical as the sector faces its current and future challenges. Diversity is an opportunity to make our businesses better.
