Real Estate Women, a network set up in 2012 by Maria Wiedner, chief executive of Cambridge Finance, to discuss gender equality in the industry, has launched a consultation white paper providing a vision for gender equality for real estate in the UK.
The paper, authored by Wiedner; Anouk Khan, founder of Oakwood Advisors; Joanna Turner, head of property research at Canada Life Investments; and Cleo Folkes, chief executive of training business Property Overview; lays out five key recommendations for achieving gender equality in the industry.
It is based on views gathered from consultation with key players across the industry, including lawyers, fund manager, surveyors, consultants and developers.
Real Estate Women’s five key recommendations:
1) Mentorship/sponsorship
Companies, regardless of type and size, should have an open forum to discuss their feelings and thoughts. We believe that this approach is less formal than matching junior with senior members in a buddy system and allows for a more natural pairing formation.
Group meetings should be frequent (once a month) and have a rotating chair, whereby the chair can propose themes and also small projects for the group.
Aims
■ To provide a forum to encourage women to find a mentor/sponsor in a natural way.
■ Give opportunities for young professionals to chair meetings and moderate discussions.
■ Provide a platform for open discussion.
■ Create a sense of community in the company and a sense that employees are being listened to.
■ Encourage women to be proactive in finding a mentor/sponsor through the platform.
Points to consider
Size of group: group meetings should have a size that would allow for personal interaction. Large companies would have to split the groups into smaller working groups of a maximum of 30 people.
Moderation: this is an important skill that does not come naturally to everyone – perhaps allow only trained moderators.
‘Sleeping Beauty syndrome’: We see the tendency of some people to say, “I was lucky enough to find a sponsor who vouched for me along the way.” That’s fine, but mentors and sponsors come in different shapes and forms and we should not wait for them to find us, we should work on finding a mentor or sponsor ourselves. It is advisable to seek a sponsor who is not your direct boss, but one or two layers up, so they are more willing to take a chance on you.
2) Data transparency
All companies in the property sector should be required to collect and submit information to a centralised database specific information about their workforce composition, and provide information on recruitment, promotion and leavers.
Aims
■ Provide benchmarking for companies so they know their position against the industry average.
■ Enable the development of commonly applied practices in diversity and make the industry more inclusive.
■ Promote the real estate industry to non-property people and make it more attractive to a wider group than before.
■ Allow analysts, academics and others to undertake analysis and provide insights, including comments on the real estate workforce.
Points to consider
Smaller companies will not have the operational resources to track their data and implement structured diversity initiatives, so they may consistently underperform the benchmark.
Companies will want to provide data only if they think they are doing well, so there may be a bias towards well-performing companies.
Obtaining and keeping data is costly, so there should be a sponsor.
3) Retention/promotions
Retention, as a by-product of employee satisfaction, is essential to reduce the attrition rate of women employees. We recommend the following steps:
■ Part-time work schedules that are not detrimental to progression and access to top clients.
■ Dispute resolution in harassment and discrimination claims that is less HR oriented and less biased towards managers over staff and more supportive of staff.
■ Parental leave, actively promoted and supported for both men and women.
■ Work with women employees to develop a career development programme, but also open this opportunity to men upon request.
Aims
■ Improve retention rates at companies so both women and men can achieve their work/life balance objectives.
■ Allow for a more motivated workforce.
4) Targets
We need to get more women in the boardroom as executives and non-executives alike. This helps foster the presence of women board members further.
Deloitte’s Women in the Boardroom report, which surveyed the efforts of 64 countries to promote boardroom gender diversity, found that companies with a female chief executive had 29% of board positions held by women. This compared with 15% in companies with a male chief executive.
Although there are no quotas for women on boards in the UK, the UK government has taken measures since 2011 to strengthen the number of and role of women both in management and on boards of directors. This led to a recommendation that FTSE 100 companies aim for 25% representation of women on boards by 2015.
Davies review
In 2016, the review led by Lord Mervyn Davies reported that women held 26.1% of FTSE 100 board seats.
The question thus arises: would the above advances in FTSE 100 companies between the years 2011-16 have been achieved without a formal review and a conscious push by the government?
Since 2016, however, the pace of increase has slowed despite support from the UK government calling for a voluntary target of 33% women directors serving on FTSE 350 boards by 2020.
And, what is the difference between the voluntary business-led approach, with a target, and an actual quota?
‘Quotas’ versus ‘targets’
During a focus group session, a number of concerns arose regarding the term “quota”, which seemed to suggest a negative connotation, versus the term “target”, which came across as a positive action. The argument against quotas is that women want to achieve success on their own merit, they do not want to be the token woman and they do not want to be faced with hostility if they have been “forced upon the board”.
Setting targets appears to have pushed companies to increase gender diversity on their boards. However, it is paramount to ensure that inclusion and diversity need to embed and integrate within an organisation’s culture. This allows the future generations to keep moving things forward. Targets are not the end goal but a necessary catalyst for change.
5) Training
Across the real estate industry, businesses have launched a wide range of policies and initiatives to increase gender diversity. Unconscious bias training is one of these important elements.
Unconscious bias happens by our brains making quick judgments and assessments of people and situations without us realising or being aware of their full impact and implications. Our biases are influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences.
Research has found that unconscious bias can heavily influence recruitment and selection decisions. Industries are tackling this problem by having unconscious bias training implemented for hiring managers to ensure they make the right decisions for the workplace. For the training to be effective, it needs to be followed up by constant communication and dialogue between management and employees.
Sign up for courses
We highly encourage each individual to take their own initiative and sign up for training courses to aid their personal growth and knowledge. Joining a network is equally important, either internal to your firm or external, to be informed of industry trends and network with peers and seniors.
The Women on Boards network is a helpful platform that provides tools to prepare women for boardroom entry, as recommended by an industry leader.
Click here to read the vision in full and provide feedback on the key recommendations.
To send feedback, e-mail or tweet @Samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
