After introducing its equal parenting policy in 2022, Laing O’Rourke has made great strides in driving cultural change within its business.
In just four years, the construction company has almost doubled the number of women in senior leadership roles on projects and increased its female representation on the Australian Executive Committee to 45 per cent. The company’s secret to success is not so secret – a sustained commitment to changing the culture of construction, says Laing O’Rourke’s General Manager – People Helen Fraser.
Late last year, Laing O’Rourke was presented with the National Association of Women in Construction’s (NAWIC) top honour – the Lendlease Crystal Vision Award for Advancing the Interests of Women in the Construction Industry – for its industry-leading approach to gender diversity and cultural change.
The centrepiece of Laing O’Rourke’s strategy is its Any Gender, Any Birth, Any Child equal parenting policy. Launched in 2022, this policy provides 26 weeks’ leave on full pay regardless of gender, and covers parents who adopt, welcome a baby via surrogacy, or suffer a pregnancy loss.
The parental leave policy sets a new benchmark for construction companies around Australia. But it is just one outcome from a ten-year process of change, says Fraser.
“We are committed to a 50/50 balance between men and women by 2033,” she says. “But to do this we have to address the reasons why women don’t thrive in construction. We must change the culture of our industry.”
The Cost of Doing Nothing report, written by BIS Oxford Economics in 2021, found that an outdated construction culture costs the Australian economy nearly $8 billion a year.
The NSW and Victorian governments established a dedicated taskforce in 2018, led by AFL Commissioner Gabrielle Trainor AO, to drive cultural change. The taskforce has drafted a culture standard which aims to address three issues: excessive working hours; poor mental health; and lack of diversity and inclusion.
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Female participation in construction remains the lowest in the country, at 12 per cent. A 2021 study by the University of Sydney and Queensland University of Technology found that just 11.1 per cent of construction industry directors are female, compared with 28.1 per cent across all industries.
Construction workers also experience higher levels of family conflict, divorce, mental illness and suicide compared with other industries. “Gender diversity is a win/win,” Fraser says. “It doesn’t take anything away from men.”
“We all benefit from more inclusive workplaces, from spending more time with our families, and by being able to prioritise our mental health and physical wellbeing.
“No one loses, especially in an industry that has a skills shortage and needs good people to grow.”
A suite of solutions
Laing O’Rourke’s parenting policy is an important attraction and retention tool for women. It also equalises and normalises caring responsibilities, improves family life and gives men a ‘lived experience’ of the work-life juggle.
At Laing O’Rourke, the number of men taking parental leave has increased by 50 per cent over the past year.
“It took some time for men to believe that their careers would not be negatively impacted if they took time out to care for their children,” Fraser says. “But Laing O’Rourke is a family company, and the leaders believe that people should have time with their families.”
“We kept talking about it, celebrating the men who took it and raising the benefit to create a culture of expectation.”
The tipping point came when senior leaders – construction and project managers who wore high vis and steel capped boots – began to take time off.
Creating a family friendly culture is not the only attraction and retention tool in Laing O’Rourke’s kit. There’s a referral bonus scheme, flexible working options on project sites, and a sponsorship program for emerging female leaders.
“Sponsorship is an effective way of helping people progress through a business,” Fraser says. “But often women don’t get as much sponsorship in male-dominated environments, so we need to create that opportunity.”
The program, held in collaboration with Cultivate, gives sponsored women ‘someone at the table’ to champion their careers. On the flip side, Fraser says sponsors have gained great insights into the experiences of women at Laing O’Rourke – another driver of cultural change.
Taken together, these measures have helped Laing O’Rourke drive up its participation of women across staff roles to 35 per cent. The number of women in senior leadership roles on projects has leapt from 11 per cent to 19 per cent in just four years.
Diversity delivers
Progress is slow but steady. “We’ve increased 2 per cent a year – and we will stay ahead of our goal of 50/50 by 2033 if we maintain this rate of improvement,” Fraser says. “We’ve tested and trialled things; we know what works and what doesn’t.”
Laing O’Rourke also knows gender balance on projects is possible. One recent Laing O’Rourke collaboration with Transport NSW achieved a minimum 50/50 gender split for 80 per cent of the program. “We proved it could be done,” she says.
The benefits of this gender balance are manifold. Fraser points to 2020 research from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) and Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, which found “a strong and convincing causal relationship” between increasing the share of women in leadership and subsequent improvements in company performance.
WGEA’s report found, for instance, that boosting female key management personnel by 10 percentage points or more leads to a 6.6 per cent increase in the market value of Australian ASX-listed companies, worth the equivalent of $104.7 million.
Beyond the dollars, Fraser says there is no doubt that bringing more women into executive leadership positions changes the conversation. “We are now thinking about people and performance in a much broader way,” she adds.
But Fraser says there’s still plenty of work ahead. “It is a male-dominated industry and there are still some traditional stereotypes and language we need to challenge and change,” she says. “The recognition from NAWIC shows us how far our industry has come.”
“There were more than 1,000 women in the room on the awards night – women who have dealt with the toughest parts of the industry but continue to push for change because they believe in this industry and what we do. To show them that things are actually changing was pretty powerful.”