Companies need to go out and actively look for female recruits

The discussion around diversity in the workplace has been swirling now for a number of years.

Holcim human resources, safety and communications executive general manager Sam Toppenberg.

The discussion around diversity in the workplace and what that means for female representation in executive and board ranks has been swirling now for a number of years. As a keen follower of these discussions I am impressed by the stories I hear of amazing women who forged successful careers, sometimes against conventional wisdom, and are now serving as role models for the younger generation of bright young things coming through the ranks.

My career has been spent in human resources and a significantly large chunk in the construction materials sector in listed companies.

The challenge for improving female participation in a sector such as construction materials is complex. Unlike banking, finance and professional services, where around half of new graduates are women, in science, technology, engineering and maths degrees female graduates represent typically 10 to 15 per cent of enrolments.

It is an issue of industry attractiveness and without a fundamental shift there are simply not enough women graduating to make a meaningful difference to participation rates.

If we are really serious about diversity, companies need to get creative. We can, and are, doing what we can to increase the attractiveness of our industry, but that’s a slow burn. We are talking about systemic long-term change.

We need to think broadly about what it means to be diverse because simply applying the old engineering graduate standard and hoping to get a female that ticks the same boxes as the traditional male did 15 years ago is not going to cut it.

Companies need to go out and actively look for women. Not only do they need to connect with the 10-15 per cent of female engineering graduates, they need to look deep within their organisations and explore operational career paths for women.

We need to challenge our thinking about what an ideal set of qualifications looks like.

Traditional engineering is a good fit for our industry, but we need to actively broaden our base and look for other qualifications and skills that, with the right training and mentoring, could be equally as good a fit. We need to look in places and consider disciplines that we haven’t before such as transferable skills and which skills can be taught.

We need to ensure our female employees are connected and networked with each other. The challenge with only a handful of operational women in a business that is geographically diverse is that often they will never come across another woman at work because the networks and role models don’t exist in any meaningful way. We need to deliberately set up opportunities for networking and sharing.

The other more obvious opportunity is to ensure we offer a superior employment experience than other sectors competing for scarce female talent. At Holcim we offer top-up superannuation contributions during parental leave and paid parental leave with a return-to-work bonus. This ensures that not only are we competitive, but it sends a signal to our female employees that we are here for the long haul — for the duration of their careers.

When I joined Holcim, I joined an executive team made up of 50 per cent women. It occurred to me at that time that since joining the “c-suite” roughly 10 years prior I had never worked with a female peer. Times are changing.

Sam Toppenberg is Holcim’s executive general manager of human resources, safety and communications