It is no secret that the real estate and construction sectors have traditionally lagged behind others on diversity across the board. Not least around LGBT issues.
But when it comes to attracting and retaining staff this excuse just doesn’t wash anymore. How many bright, young things with bags of fresh talent and innovative ideas are going to be queuing up to work for a staid, stuffy, old-fashioned firm with values to match?
The RICS has warned that by 2019, Britain could stop building if current statistics around staff retention in the sector do not improve. It says the property and construction profession loses more than 400,000 employees a year, which could lead to a skills gap significant enough to threaten the future viability of the industry.
So what is the property industry doing to up its game and how much further do we have to go?
Stonewalled
An indication of just how far the sector still has to go is clear to see when looking at how property measures up against other industries. While many of the big propcos, REITS and agencies are moving towards being more inclusive, they remain absent from the best practice rating of gay-friendly employers.
While banks, accountants, law firms and government regularly appear on LGBT lobby group Stonewall’s Top 100 Employers list, the equality campaigner says the absence of construction and real estate firms anywhere near the top of the LGBT leagues is an indication that companies in this sector still perform poorly in terms of attracting and retaining gay, lesbian and bisexual staff.
But times are changing. And given the RICS’s warning over staff retention, this issue is now moving rapidly up the agenda for real estate companies.
One of the biggest boosts has been the establishing of Freehold, a networking forum set up exclusively for LGBT professionals in the property industry. Since it was founded in 2011, the group has grown rapidly to a membership of 730 including building surveyors, valuation surveyors, agency surveyors, asset managers, architects, developers, investors and property lawyers, from both the public and private sector (see interview, page 66).
The group also has a large number of LGBT allies and major firms including JLL and CBRE, which regularly host Freehold events at their offices.
“We started Freehold as a safe environment for the LGBT community to have a support network within the industry,” says David Mann, one of the organisation’s co-founders and a partner at Tuffin Ferraby Taylor.
“It was a bit scary at the time, because I didn’t really want to put my head above the parapet more than anyone else. But I think it had got to the stage that we felt we needed to.”
The network was an industry first on this scale and ultimately set out to show others that there is a sizeable LGBT community in the property industry: “At first we were not really sure if anyone would turn up. But from that collective getting together our confidence has grown significantly. As a result employers have woken up to the fact that they have a number of gay employees,” says Mann.
“When we approached all the big agents in 2011, some of them were not interested, some said they didn’t have any gay employees, some said they didn’t have any issues. There has been a complete sea-change in attitudes since then and people are almost biting our hands off to engage with us. We have got hosts lined up for our events well into next year.”
The group has been working with Stonewall, which has a best practice forum for employers, to help guide them in achieving diversity in this area.
Building Pride
Other cases of good practice have started to emerge, such as JLL’s in-house forum Building Pride. Developer L&Q has updated staff and family-friendly policies to make sure they include LGBT-specific language, and has also reworked all standard tenancy agreements to make sure they apply to civil partners as well as married couples.
Earlier this year contractor Lend Lease adopted Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces campaign, originally designed to tackle homophobia in sport, and gave thousands of construction workers at Lend Lease sites coloured laces for their boots. Lend Lease said at the time of adopting Rainbow Laces, which ran alongside an awareness campaign, that a “diverse and inclusive culture makes good business sense”.
Industry bodies are also keen to raise the issue higher up the property agenda. Earlier this month the RICS launched an initiative to encourage firms to attract and create a more diverse and inclusive workforce. The Inclusive Employer Quality Mark asks employers to pledge their commitment to adopting and improving against six principles – leadership and vision, recruitment, staff development, staff retention, staff engagement and continuous improvement. The RICS will then evaluate companies biannually on how well they are doing, actions being taken and outcomes.
“It is well acknowledged that the property and construction industries have lagged behind other industries – but we are catching up quickly,” says Louise Brooke-Smith, president of the RICS. “We hope this will help speed that process up; that’s what this initiative is all about.
“We want staff to know that they are valued at work and feel valued for their whole person.”
Since launching, the scheme has already attracted Deloitte, DTZ, EC Harris and Arcadis. Other supporters include The Association of Women in Property, the Government Property Unit, the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust and Liz Peace, former chief executive of the British Property Federation.
The RICS will be looking to target more members as the scheme progresses.
“There are a number of things which the better employers do; communicating to all staff why creating inclusive workplaces has a business case; training staff on how to manage a diverse workforce; tackling things like bullying; perhaps considering what counts as homophobic language,” says Freehold board member Chris Edwards.
“Some of the very best employers set up internal networking groups and potentially get community groups involved with internal events.”
Discrimination
But there is still some way to go. According to Stonewall, one in five employees have witnessed or experienced homophobic bullying at work and in Estates Gazette’s Salary Survey 2014, 17% of respondents said they felt discriminated at work with 9% citing their sexuality as the reason. “I think often in professional services it comes from a lack of understanding rather than overt bullying and harassment, but it is quite difficult to make that distinction,” says Freehold’s Edwards.
“A lot of the experiences shared with me are quite subtle. Others are quite overt – for example, one employee I came across was told by the boss not to bring his same-sex partner to a client event.”
It could be misconstrued as mercenary, but one way to tackle such discrimination is to highlight the evidence of business success in relation to equality.
Research in 2013 by the New York-based Center for Talent Innovation found that publicly traded companies with greater diversity were 45% more likely than those without to have expanded market share in the past year and 70% more likely to have captured a new market. An American Sociological Association study supports this, finding that for every 1% rise in the rate of gender diversity and ethnic diversity in a workforce there is a 3% and 9% rise in sales revenue, respectively. So, diversity and inclusion are good concepts for both employees and businesses.
“Freehold has been a powerful force which has demonstrated that there are hundreds of professionals within the sector who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender,” says Neil Bentley, chief executive of Outstanding, a networking group for LGBT executives. “What we want to do is help the leadership of companies to think about this more broadly, think about it as part of their leadership agenda, and also think about it in terms of how they position themselves in the market.
“There have been a lot of issues throughout the recession about trusting business. But there is a big opportunity now for businesses to be upfront about the work they are doing on their responsibility agenda, the work they are doing in communities, and the work they are doing on diversity and inclusion to make sure they are the most inclusive they can be.
“I believe that companies that are most progressive in this sense and are externalising their diversity and inclusion can win more business.”
It is fairly recent that business executives in all sectors have felt they can be openly out of the closet; Christopher Bailey, chief executive of Burberry, was the first openly gay chief executive of a FTSE 100 company only last year.
“Because Freehold has demonstrated there is a critical mass of LGBT people working in the sector, a number of employers are now sitting up and taking notice,” concludes Edwards. “If they want to be seen as being inclusive employers, if they want to attract and retain the best talent, then they need to up their game to compete.”
In another landmark move, Outstanding recently signed British Land as its first corporate partner. This has triggered hopes that more will follow.
“The sector is beginning to point in the right direction,” concludes Bentley, “but there is clearly a lot more to do – and others should follow British Land’s lead.”
With plenty of talk action, the property industry will, or at least should, be looking very closely at Stonewall’s 2016 Employers list.
All about allies
JLL chief executive and Freehold ally Guy Grainger on LGBT diversity in the property sector
How do you think the property industry compares with other sectors when it comes to LGBT diversity?
Not very well. As a firm we are working to change the perception of property as old fashioned and the preserve of the old school tie network, through establishing a dedicated LGBT network and being involved in events such as London Pride more publicly.
What could be done to make the sector more inclusive?
We can talk more openly about sexuality and people’s freedom of choice. As a founder member of Changing the Face of Property we recognise that raising awareness of careers in the property industry plays a major part in improving inclusivity. We are building relationships with a broad range of schools and universities to show that property is an exciting and relevant sector to work in. The more people who know about the sector the easier it will become to ensure a more diverse and vibrant workforce.
None of the major names in commercial property feature yet in Stonewall’s Top 100 Employers; why do you think that is?
Inclusion in the Stonewall equality index is certainly in our sights. Now that the industry is waking up to the need to be more diverse and to measure this, property companies will start to apply. We have an entry in Stonewall’s recent Starting Out LGBT community careers guide, which includes all employers who value a diverse workforce.
What do you think has been the biggest obstacle? Is it the way the property industry has been perceived?
The perception of property is a big obstacle, but it’s our own fault. That’s why we have been attending careers fairs at a wider variety of schools and universities, why we have launched a new graduate campaign involving social media and why we have taken on more apprentices.
Are there any other points you think it’s important to make about the commercial property sector and the way LGBT issues are handled?
We are now talking the talk, but it’s time to walk it. The industry has come a long way in terms of embracing diversity, especially LGBT events and forums, but we still have a long way to go. We are proud to be one of the leaders in the industry when it comes to championing diversity and making a real difference, and JLL will continue to strive to make property more accessible and inclusive to all.
