As the UN’s International Equal Pay Day approaches, it’s important to tackle the gender pay gap in construction, which, according to the 2023 ONS data, stands at 12.1% (median average). The Gender Pay Gap across the construction sector has worsened by a median 3% over the past three years, going from 9.3% to 12.1%. 

There is a clear picture here of a worsening gender pay gap, but what does the construction industry need to do to get into a more positive place, and how can it achieve pay parity? 

Acknowledge the Issue at Hand 

It’s often simple to ignore these issues, but for real change to occur, we must acknowledge them. As an industry that intersects with many others, we must recognise the problem and start addressing it.

*calculated as the difference between average hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men and women as a proportion of average hourly earnings (excluding overtime) of men. 

Transparent Salary Reporting

While any business that employs over 250 people is legally required in the UK to publish a gender pay gap report, this isn’t to say that smaller companies can’t. While the data may be harder to analyse, there is nothing stopping you from going through the process of gender pay gap reporting. Using data from a construction analytics software can help to streamline the process and provide your team with insight. 

Similarly, you can also offer clear salary bands across the company. This way people can see what range they can be earning from, and how moving up should affect their pay. 

Create Bias-free Hiring Practices

Companies that utilise bias-free hiring practices such as seeing anonymous CVs can help to remove any notion of gender and race as part of the hiring process. You can also use tools such as the Gender Decoder to remove gender-coded language in job descriptions, which help to remove unconscious gender bias in the hiring process. 

You could also take a more drastic approach like the Eindhoven University of Technology, who only allowed women to apply to jobs for the first six months they were open, and then let men apply. While this policy has changed since the outcry, the initial policy worked. In five years, the percentage of newly hired female academic staff grew from 30% to 50%. The number of female permanent academic staff increased from 22% to 29%.

Actively Address Harassment and “Lad” Culture

While construction holds a legacy of lad culture and “banter”, it’s important to set clear boundaries of what is ok and what isn’t ok across the workplace. It can be off-putting for anyone who feels like they may not fit in with the “banter” to want to join a company. 

With harassment of any kind, it’s important to make a clear statement as to how it has been dealt with and how workplaces plan to action these kinds of things. Whether sexuality, race or gender, making an example of how things have been dealt with shows that such behaviour isn’t tolerated and makes employees affected feel seen and heard. 

Working with Schools and Universities 

Growing the pool of those interested in working in construction has to start from the ground up. Whether your company wants to partner with a local school to offer workshops, or you offer training programs to those in universities, working with local educational institutions is a great way to boost the intake of a variety of people throughout the construction industry.

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