Episode 18 – Part 2: How you can practically improve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in your company and the wider industry with Sybil Taunton, RICS

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

Matt Nally 

How are you seeing the industry’s position at the moment, in terms of like, what what’s the status and standpoint as to where we are now [with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion]?

Sybil Taunton 

I think the industry has a long way to go. I think whether we’re talking about real estate or construction, basically, the the built and natural environment as a whole has some work to do, you know, representation across pretty much all of the protected characteristics, you know, is is quite low to include women, you know, which, in some industries, we’re seeing much closer, or much smaller gaps in the in the gender gap, whether that is about representation or pay, you know, we’re seeing other industries while ahead of us in terms of closing that gap. Looking at surveying, binary gender is our strongest dataset that we have within the RCS at the moment, with over 90% response rate in terms of people disclosing their binary gender to us. And so, right now we’re looking at still inching toward our around 19% women in the profession now. So when you’re looking at a membership of over 134,000, people, you know, that’s still only around 25,000. Women. And, and that’s scary low, considering how long the profession has been around for over 150 years. And so, on the one hand, it’s scary low, and it and it sends up alarm bells that we have significant amount of work to do. On the other hand, it it’s on par with predictions from the World Economic Forum. So they they have said in recent reports that it’s going to take 136 years still to close the gender gap. And that number feels startling 136 years. But then when we think about the first woman surveyor, Irene Barclay was in 1928. So 1928 to 2023, nearly 100 years to get us to 19%. So when you put it in that perspective, the 136 Actually, isn’t that staggering anymore, it actually is uncomfortably on par with how slow progression has already been up to this point. I think the the reassuring thing about the conversation is that it’ll take us 136 years if we don’t do anything differently. And so that’s where we get to back to the conversation about equity and deliver it changes and how do we focus on on certain areas? So I’m rambling a bit again, got it? I think, yeah, we have a lot of work to do, across the board across all protected characteristics in the industry. And we have to start having more deliberate conversations about that, in terms of what are we doing now? I think there’s been a tonne of conversations on what are the problems? We know what the problems are, we’re lacking representation. You know, we, we’re, we’re not seeing the diverse talent that’s coming out of academic institutions. Now. We’re seeing increased representation across academic programmes, we’re still not seeing that translate into industry. What’s happening there? You know, that means it’s on industry to solve that. What kind of deliberate steps are we taking to get after it? So I think we’re at that critical point now where we’ve got to stop talking about it, and start actually doing some things with the conversations.

Matt Nally 

Yes, it’s a very interesting point. I think one of the things I noticed, I suppose more from a societal perspective, when I spent some time in a surveying firm, we were sending out the initial lead responses to different customers, same email, same content. The only difference was the email that came from either mine or my, my, my friends or colleagues from her email. has actually had accreditations on the bottom. I didn’t I was just like a general response, mine had a higher conversion rate is from what we measured. Versus there’s so there’s a societal sort of bias, I think, as well, at the moment shops, we have to challenge as part of the overall strategy. But I think that must for them feed into the actions we take around how we get people involved in the industry. So do you know what’s going on at the moment to try and help change, like much earlier on the perceptions around surveying and why to go into or not go into it? And wants to challenge it from that perspective, too.

Sybil Taunton 

Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a lot of conversations happening. I mean, we have a whole early engagement team within our ICS who’s, who are looking harder, how do we, how do we get into different schools, different communities? And how do we Create a more robust programme to start the education a lot earlier in terms of school aged, you know, students and opening their aperture and understanding of what career opportunities are available, and the built environment. And what’s great to see is that a lot of our firms are starting to come together, at least, you know, I’m seeing that on the property side for sure. With the changing the face of property collective, with some of the larger firms. They’re coming at it together and not just going, Yeah, we really need to get in to schools and tell them why they should come work for JLL. Someday, it’s no, let’s all work together and say, here’s why, you know, property should be appealing. And it’s not about that competitive recruitment advantage. It’s like everyone gets it like we, we have to be on board together, getting after this together, if we want anything to change, and I think that’s a really reassuring, positive thing to see. And I know, there’s a lot of work on the construction side of the house as well to do the same, like, let’s all come to the table together, and figure out how we solve this because we really can’t afford not to. And so you see the same thing in the sustainability space, like we can’t afford not to collaborate, dei is the same. Same thing. There’s, there’s no, there’s no room or time to waste on stovepiping best practice and keeping it to ourselves. And so yeah, I think there’s a lot of conversations around, how do we get in with, with young people with students, you know, when they’re out those decisions of starting to think about what they want to do what they want to be, get the built environment on our radar early, and show that actually, there’s a lot of great opportunity there. I will challenge the industry, though to say, and I do every time I get the opportunity that we’ve got to make sure we’re working on that culture piece, as well. Because it better be an industry that is safe and welcoming and inclusive of everyone, by the time they get through school, they get their, you know, accreditations and they and they start to take their AAPC you know, like to get chartered or, or go work in firms like we better have gotten ourselves together and created more inclusive environments, where all have that beautifully diverse talent, you know, is going to be able to thrive the way we want it to.

Matt Nally 

Yeah, it’s a very valid point that she around the everyone working together for, you know, that that piece around helping to get the engagement early on. Yes, someone might go somewhere else. But that’s because they weren’t suited to your firm to begin with, potentially. But equally all the work that someone else is doing in another firm means someone that’s not necessarily right there will then come to you, you end up with a bigger talent board overall, that everyone can engage with. Exactly. I suppose then talking about the culture aspect, what are the How can we identify the sort of unconscious biases that we might have in the recruiting or promotional process or how we deal with people because one of the one of the interesting things I was watching recently was coded by us on on Netflix, around a lot of the AI models and how they have the biases built in from the way they’re trained in the first place. So if you if you’re obviously in a position where you’re not equally represented the moment she’s likely, obviously, how do you make sure that you haven’t got that perspective or that lens on it when you’re measuring? Or not measuring? I said, How are you deciding how to implement your changes going forward?

Sybil Taunton

I think measuring is a great word, because I think it comes back down to evaluating where you’re at what is your baseline look like? And you can measure those things, and you can figure out where you’re starting places by looking at, okay, in our, in our past, however many, you know, over the last year or five years, we’ve hired this many people of the groups, you know, of those people that we’ve recently hired, you know, what is the demographic makeup look like, of that population of people? I think if trying to get it right, going back historically is going to be a challenge for for some firms. But I think, you know, looking at who what your shortlist populations look like, you know, historically across your shortlisting would have been what has been the demographic makeup of those. In like, all these things, you can measure those even if you’re starting, like right now, moving forward, we’re gonna start measuring these things. Pay close attention to who it is that you’re actually getting in, if you’re, you know, got 60 applicants, you know, for one role, that’s a lot. Look at who’s actually making it, what’s the population that’s making it through the algorithms, you know, whether it’s your own HR system, or the LinkedIn algorithms that are filtering out people, you know, who’s actually making it through those filters. And if you’re seeing, you know, of the pool of 60 that we got, we’re still getting this very homogenous group of people. There are some things to look out how are we setting the you know, our keywords and or our top three priorities that we want? aren’t like, are we? Are we excluding or eliminating people based off of how we’re writing the position description, and what those key words are that we want people using to get them through. There are just so many different things that you can look at. But you’ve got to understand where you’re starting place, you have to evaluate your own behaviours, your own, yeah, practices, that sort of thing, in order to understand what you need to change, and so I think, yeah, I’ll keep going back to all the time of like, use the data, like, evaluate as much as you can, to understand that starting place in any way possible. I think the bias conversation is hard, because, you know, there’s some Where’s like, you know, a lot of people talk about unconscious bias, you know, there’s conscious bias as well. But let’s say we are going to talk about unconscious bias. Because we like to give people the benefit of the doubt and say, everyone has the best of intentions, sometimes they just get it wrong, okay, great. In order to understand your own unconscious bias, like that takes a lot of work that takes training. And we mean, I would definitely recommend firms bringing in consultants who specialise in this, because there are a lot of great ones out there, especially ones working focused in the built environment. But that’s not something that’s just going to come from reading a blog, or listening to a podcast and going all these must be my biases, it’s a you know, it’s a commitment to like, take on some training to really unpack that, to know how to undo some of that or counter your own unconscious biases in a meaningful way. And so doing a, a one off unconscious bias training session for your whole team that lasts two hours. And it’s that’s it done and dusted. That’s not there’s plenty to, you know, have evidence to show it’s not going to do a whole lot, it has to be a deliberate kind of long term commitment to unpacking those things. So I’d say while you’re, if you know, if your firm is going to commit to that, and you’re going to do the work, fantastic. Also do the work to evaluate how you’ve been recruiting, you know, where you’ve been recruiting from earlier in the conversation, I said, look at the, if you’re prioritising the top tier universities, and you’re only willing to take candidates from those universities, or they get certain, you know, levels on their GCSEs, or whatever it may be, you know, if you’re, there might be exclusive criteria that you’re setting in your recruitment process that maybe if you change that a bit, look at some other universities you haven’t considered before those types of things that still have accredited courses, you might find that there’s quite simple solutions to the problems you’re having. But you you’ll never know what your problems are, unless you explore what your behaviours have been. Or your practices have been. So it’s, it’s all about Yeah, drilling into, what have we been doing? And, and how is that? What are those results look like for us? Yeah, yeah.

Matt Nally

That’s, um, touched on, we potentially part of the answer to the next question in just a minute. So what I was interested in was what do you say to someone that turns around and goes, we’ve looked at our recruitment process and our diversity activities and aspects. And ultimately, it just in line with what the current, you know, which kind of split is or for the industry average? Really, it’s down to the rsgs early engagement, or it’s down to the universities with how they get people on to courses, or it’s down to how schools are teaching something? It as well as that. You’re looking at the recruitment. From a university perspective, there are other things that you’re seeing firms do that can help to challenge that, I suppose mentality and look at other ways where you can get to source candidates for more engaged with people. Absolutely. I

Sybil Taunton

think, you know, apprenticeship programmes, help with this, you know, internship programmes help with this. So that it’s not just looking at, like I said, the university programmes, it’s finding other ways of bringing, bringing talent into the industry. You know, and a lot of times, I mean, the apprenticeship programmes are awesome, because they enable people to get to work sooner and learn the ins and outs of, of the profession while they get their degree programmes sorted. But yeah, so I would say there, there are different ways of, of doing things. There. There’s a piece of work that we have. So we have a Memorandum of Understanding signed amongst six of us as professional bodies in the built environment. And we have three core pillars that we’re looking at within that MOU. The first one is data collection, agreeing to a set of questions, and then being willing to share and compare data with each other. The second pillar is that education to industry pipeline that we’re talking about in this question, and then the third pillar is like overall learning and development for the industry. But so on the on the education industry piece, we’re asking the same question. So we’re seeing from, you know, data from the institutions that diversity, diverse representation is increasing and improving across degree programmes. And we’re not seeing that translating into industry. So we want to know why. So together, we are looking to unpack that we’ve we sent a survey around to employers, asking them a set of questions of where they think the pain points are, we’re going to do the same with academic institutions. And we’re going to do the same with, you know, former current students. And we’re going to see where those Venn diagram where that Venn diagram comes together and see where the pain points actually are. Because we get, you know, varying responses from the different sides of the house, but we’re hoping we’ll be able to drill into where those specific pain points are to start answering that question. If a firm believes that they’re recruiting talent that’s in line with the representation that’s coming out of university, they’re in a really great position, then because there’s not a lot of firms that can say that. And so I would say, the fact that they even know that, and then they’re tracking in that data, and they’re looking at what has a saying academic institutions are doing, I would say that firms putting in some great effort to do good in this space, because they won, like I said, care about the data. They’re they’re taking the time to look at that. And they’re asking themselves, are we where we should be? And so, yeah, I would, I would give kudos to a firm that came to me and said, Hey, we’ve been collecting this data, we’re looking at this, we’ve been really deliberate about our recruitment. We think we’re on track with us, I’d be like, well done. That’s fantastic. Like, tell me what you’ve been, you know, doing? How can we share that with other firms? So yeah, there’s reassuring bit in that I think

Matt Nally

that’d be really, really fascinating to read. Do you know when that’s likely to come out? Or is it still very early, initial stages?

Sybil Taunton

So we’re still in the initial stages, like I said, we sent the survey out to two firms, we did get a good good response rate, which is nice. We haven’t started unpacking those responses yet. Because that just closed end of July. And so yeah, I think according to our action plan, you know, hopefully, we’ll have something early in the new year to share with, with everyone on on what our findings are. And then again, that’ll be collective collaborative efforts to try and solve the challenges and not something that we can any one of us do on our own.

Matt Nally

No, no, no. Fast fascinated to read that when it comes out. I think my final question is, how does this relate potentially to sole traders and SMEs? Because a lot of the industry is made up of small firms as well. And I think a lot of these are easier, as you say, on a bigger scale in terms of the anonymity and bits of pieces. So are there things that you’re seeing that SMEs, or individuals can do more easily to help with this? Challenge? I suppose?

Sybil Taunton

Absolutely. Because I think it’s 100% SMEs belong in this conversation and have a vital role to play in it in terms of the fact that maybe they don’t have teams of people they’re employing. But that’s where dei isn’t just about employment practices. It’s not just about HR. It’s about everything, it’s how do we work with our clients and our stakeholders? Because your inclusive culture has to echo out and like, reflect out into your stakeholders and your client base as well. You know, do you have any sorts of biases that are taking place and how you take on clients? You know, is it impacting potentially your valuation practices, you know, things to really unpack there? Have you explored ways of ensuring that bias can creep into those processes, and then there’s also really good conversations being had around supply chain, you know, maybe you don’t have a team that you’re looking after, or, you know, you’re a sole trader, a very small micro firm, but you can absolutely hold your supply chain accountable for the things that they’re doing. And asking the questions of those organisations that you may be taking on a large firm as a supply chain partner, you know, hold them accountable and ask them what is your representation look like? You know, what kinds of, you know, policies and practices do you have in place? Do you have a dei policy or strategy within your organisation? And if they’re, you know, sole traders are only willing to work with organisations who are prioritising Dei, fantastic. They’re doing their part to make sure you know, they’re holding the industry accountable. So there’s definitely a conversation for sole traders and SMEs in this. And we’re, at least for our ACS, we’re, we’ve been working with some of our members and some of the EDI leaders from our member firms to build out Rule four of the rules of conduct and Rule Four, it was just added in February of this year, and it focuses on diversity and inclusion and respect. And, and we’re working on hopefully in October, we’ll be publishing much more robust guidance, resources, signposting to organisations and networks that are operating in the space to better support and this is going to be a really helpful tool. For our SMEs that maybe can’t afford to have a me, you know, or you know, someone leading on EDI in their organisation, they at least have this resource available to them through the our ICS website to help kind of guide them in the right direction on the things they should be looking at. And supply chain, you know, conversations are included within that. So yeah, definitely recognise that it’s much bigger than recruitment, retention development, it’s about everything you do as a business. And do you reflect the type of inclusive culture that we want to see in the industry?

Matt Nally

Awesome. That’s one question there is, is it important to try and measure that then from a an understanding of how your customer base splits down in terms of does that does that help to inform other aspects of this as well?

Sybil Taunton

Absolutely. Any any sort of data you can collect to evaluate behaviour patterns, you know, and ways of operating, I think is eye opening and informative for for any organisation, because it definitely helps if there’s a layer of unconscious bias that they haven’t even recognise, that data may uncover for them and go, Oh, man, I just recognise, like, we completely only service this one side of the community, you know, we’ve been wholly missing this other side of the community, we could be serving or, you know, we haven’t taken any steps to work with supply chain partners beyond this small pool of, of, you know, whatever organisations where you could be opening the aperture on that and looking at, you know, ethnic minority, minority owned businesses, or, you know, whatever it may be, you can take some deliberate steps there to, to, like, look at your supply chain, but you only know what steps you need to take, if you know, what you’ve been doing. And so yeah, anyway, like that. And that’s what I mean is if people, you know, have a conversation about okay, what what gets measured gets done, oh, dei is this fluffy, you know, qualitative, you know, feels type of thing. And that’s not true, literally everything about dei can be measured, if, if you take the time to unpack it and go, all right, we can actually start creating Excel sheets that tell us the you know, what clients we’ve been working with, and what areas across different categories, and then start paying attention to, to our our behaviours and our practices to be more mindful and deliberate about how we do better.

Matt Nally 

It wasn’t awesome. Thanks for coming on today and talking through everything. In terms of I suppose firms looking for resources, I know you mentioned you’ve got stuff coming up in October, but then things that they can reach out about in the meantime, just to sort of get started with the, I suppose the conversation internally or something of that around what they can do?

Sybil Taunton

Absolutely, yeah, there’s a lot of networks operating in the built environment, if they want to have more specific conversations, maybe they’ve done some work and they recognise they have gaps in specific areas. And there’s there are networks in the space that are happy to support. But in terms of like, general questions, or if they, you know, would like to know what the who those networks are, or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. People can email us at dei at our ics.org. And we’re happy to help point people in the right direction.

Matt Nally

Sounds great. Thank you, again, for coming on. And hopefully we’ll do another catch up and maybe a year see how things have moved on.

Sybil Taunton

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, sounds great.