Coates boss: change under way in male-dominated sector

Keen to boost profitability and innovation? Surveys suggest women hold the key.

Murray Vitlich Coates Hire chief executive

Hiring more women to the workplace is not just about ticking the diversity box for a company. Research shows having a diverse workforce provides measurable benefits to any business, particularly when it comes to profitability.

One study of 1700 companies across the globe found that those with a more diverse management and staff have 19 per cent higher revenue due to innovation. And McKinsey research, featured in Harvard Business Review, found companies in the top quartile of gender diversity on executive teams were 25 per cent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

For 135 years Coates Hire has been male dominated, but that is slowly changing. A major obstacle to change for any company, let alone a company the size of Coates is that the way things were done worked. Our success ensured change never needed to be a business imperative, so for more than a century it had a very low female participation rate. In something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, it became hard to attract women to join a male-dominated workforce.

But change was needed as the business world digitally transformed and evolved. Change started at the top when our board recognised the need for it. We developed a transformation agenda as part of the our growth strategy, with people practices and cultural transformation at its heart. The company set the target to increase female representation at the senior level by at least seven per cent by 2025. We now have women in the roles of group manager of corporate comms and sustainability; of organisational effectiveness; and of strategy and customer experience, to name just a few.

We then began to digitally transform the business and took our first steps towards developing meaningful and respectful relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders through the launch of a reconciliation action plan. We will launch a sustainability strategy in June.

It’s no coincidence these changes came as the company moved towards a more inclusive work force. Women make up 18 per cent of our workforce, and 15.5 per cent of our leaders.

We will roll out conscious inclusion training to change preconceptions around women in the workforce so thatduring the hiring process any gender bias is nullified. This is aimed to get women through the door more readily, and to keep them here we will implement a new leadership program to develop high potential female talent every year.

With a data-driven approach, we are actively looking to hire more women to management roles. Research has found inclusive teams make better decisions 87 per cent of the time, while another found 56 per cent of companies with revenues upwards of $10bn strongly agreed that diversity helps drive innovation.

McKinsey research highlighted female participation has slowed, sitting at a rate of about two-thirds that of men globally, and that tangible progress toward equality in work and society was stagnant in the five years between 2014 and 2019.

Furthermore, a decline has set in amid the pandemic and the HBR found that while women make up 39 per cent of global employment they’ve accounted for 54 per cent of job losses since May 2020.

The phrase “Old Boy’s Club” is used to highlight how an organisation is stuck in its ways, and elevates people who think the same way. This is a perception – and a reality – that everyone wants to avoid. To break that reality, we must challenge the status quo and elevate new ideas to enable a greater emphasis on inclusion, diversity and progressive thinking.

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Murray Vitlich is CEO, Coates Hire