Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion are intrinsic to our ESG strategy. Both D&I and ESG create long-term sustainability for Kilsaran.
In January 2022, as part of our Diversity and Inclusion, Employee Engagement, and Culture strategy we partnered with a science-based, data-led diversity and inclusion platform called Inclusio. The aim of our partnership with Inclusio, which was developed at Dublin City University, was to help us support a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace.
We launched our ‘Have Your Say Programme’, via the Inclusio platform in January 2022. This gave our people the opportunity to contribute and share easily and safely what it’s like to work at Kilsaran. It also provided access to quick, bite sized articles and videos about how we can build inclusive working environments, learnings about unconscious bias, managing wellbeing and how to thrive as a team. Participants also took part anonymously in open discussion forums on topics like communications, work life balance and wellbeing.
With five different generations in our workforce that have their own defining values, beliefs, and views it was important to hear what our people wanted to say and what they are experiencing working at Kilsaran.
We established a new Diversity and Inclusion Team in November 2022. The creation of this team was one of a number of recommendations from the ‘Have Your Say’ Programme. The objective of this team is to help build diverse teams and promote an inclusive workplace within Kilsaran and is currently working on a number of initiatives in this regard.
Attracting female talent into our industry is challenging. According to the Construction Industry Federation, in 2022, only 8% of the workforce was female. In Kilsaran we are relatively successful in attracting female candidates for roles in our support functions, however, the proportion of women applying for operational & senior management roles is significantly smaller.
We will continue to review our recruitment practices to see how we can attract more females into our business in the future.