COMMENT Our sector is at its best when it’s outward facing, engaged in the issues facing our customers and society. We lose something when we are inward looking and focused on issues that only really matter to us.
This is something that applies to many industries, not only our own and it’s felt acutely by the people who judge us most.
Consultant 5654 & Company’s report An Opportunity to Lead shows that the public want to see big business do more to address some of the UK’s biggest challenges, be that job creation, opportunities for young people or climate change.
It’s difficult to reconcile these results with what I saw at UKREiiF recently, which demonstrated a sector that was determined and committed to contribute to the public good. It made me reflect on whether we’re doing enough to ensure that what we’re talking about is connecting with what our stakeholders and the wider public expect of us.
Representing our communities
One way we’re trying to address this is through Landsec Futures – a £20m fund which will enhance social mobility in our industry, our business and in the places where we invest.
Why focus on social mobility? The fact is that the commercial, social and sustainable goals to which we all aspire can only be met in the long term if the buildings and places we create meet the needs of the communities that they are part of.
And if we want those communities to consider us true partners, we must ensure our industry is more representative of the people we serve. The issue of social mobility underpins lots of the challenges we face in creating a more diverse workforce. Some 40% of the real estate industry attended either a fee-paying or selective school.
I recently met with a councillor in one of our local authority areas who, unprompted, told me that our industry sticks out to them for our lack of diversity. And I’m sure many of you reading this have had the same feedback.
We recently did some youth engagement work to rethink the public realm around Cardinal Place in Victoria, the young people from the area all made it very clear how they are looking to businesses like ours to help them access opportunities for work and development.
As one of the largest employers in the UK, the sector has the scale and the reach to be an engine for growth as well as change. We know the extraordinary range of roles and careers that our industry offers, which suit countless skillsets and interests, roles that too few people outside our industry know about.
Building partnerships
Change of this nature and scale requires partnership. This is not something we could – or would want to – do alone.
There are so many people and organisations already driving social mobility efforts, whether that’s the excellent charities we’re supporting through the Fund, such as Resurgo’s Spear programme, Key4Life and PEEK, through to corporate initiatives from organisations such as EY or PwC.
It’s on all of us to build on the progress made, it will take focus and intent – we can’t assume it will all fall into place or that others will fix the problem for us.
One way we’re starting to take ownership within our own business is by collecting the social mobility data of our workforce.
Understandably, it’s not something everyone is immediately comfortable with, but if we want to drive change, we need to understand the picture we’re working from.
Spreading opportunity
By individual organisations taking ownership of their actions and working in collaboration to raise awareness of the opportunities that real estate can offer and to implement the right interventions, be they big or small, we can underline that this is an industry for everyone.
In doing so, we’re not just spreading opportunity across the country, we’re building closer relationships with our public sector partners and we’re creating the human capital that can fuel the levelling up agenda and deliver sustainable, economic growth.
While I’m an advocate for business stepping up to collaborate with local authorities to address these issues, we also need to look to central government if we’re going to turbo charge social mobility.
The role of education is critical – whether through inspiring young people to explore new subjects through to the careers advice they receive in school. The funding and resourcing of our schools has dominated the news agenda for weeks and is clearly something as a nation we need to address to ensure that opportunity is more equally spread.
The next few years are going to be challenging for society and for UK business. To navigate them successfully our industry will need to continue to show how what we do matters.
Mark Allan is chief executive at Landsec
