With the skills deficit continuing to grow, Aggregate Industries believes that breaking down gender barriers is vital to safeguarding the future of the construction industry and has laid some firm foundations to encourage more women into its own workforce.
Currently, as is typical with most traditionally male-dominated trade sectors, Aggregate Industries’ workforce population is made up of 84% males.
However, as part of a wider diversity and inclusion strategy, Aggregate Industries says it is committed to increasing their female workforce to 20% by 2020 and up to 30% by 2030 – a move, which it says, is incremental if the industry is to see its full potential.
Jo Hankinson, HR business partner at Aggregate Industries, said: “Although in the initial stages, we are investing heavily in our diversity and inclusion programme as a business over the next few years in order to ensure we have a more balanced workforce – with a particular focus on attracting more women.”
Aggregate Industries has continued to actively increase female intake for its graduate and higher apprenticeships schemes over recent years. As a result, a quarter of all graduates taken on in 2015 and 2016 were female and a third of higher apprentices employed were female.
Interestingly, research recently conducted by Aggregate Industries’ parent company, Lafarge Holcim, shows that women are slowly closing the gender gap when it comes to studying the trade–centred topics of science and engineering. In 2008 this figure stood at just 32.2% and rose to 40.3% in 2015.
