Achieving Gender Balance

Hiring women into leadership roles can be one of the most effective ways of reducing gender disparity at all levels in a business.

Not only do other women see positive role models at work every day, but organisational language also shifts, particularly when a woman is in the top job*, further encouraging female employees looking for real, earned career advancement.

RML’s Executive Chair, Simon Kidney, is a great believer in equality in the workplace, and since he bought into RML six and a half years ago, has made great strides in ensuring greater diversity in the business. With just four female employees back in 2015, RML has worked hard to recruit and retain female talent at all levels of the business and that figure now stands at around 20%. Now with a far more balanced workforce at every level, Simon was delighted to announce last month that the next leader of the business is female.

“In my six and a half years as CEO of RML, one of my targets was to make the business better reflect society in terms of gender balance; I knew this would have a positive impact on how the business works. The outcomes we have achieved – including tripling the size of the business in that time – have proved my point,” he explained. “The key leadership team in the business now, Sam Gartside as CEO and Matt Korny as General Manager, is a perfect balance. As importantly, the Leadership team as well as the middle management coming up behind them demonstrate a healthy male/female balance aspiring to the future of the business.”

That the next generation is full of female as well as male talent is something Simon is rightly proud of, and with a female CEO, this legacy is likely to further strengthen.

Watch out for our blog on Friday about a very exciting project designed to make a substantial impact on the construction sector and its gender balance!

Sources:

*Research from the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2026443119#sec-1)