NCC promoting diversity and gender equality to increase competitiveness
Today is International Women’s Day and for NCC, gender equality and diversity are key issues for improving competitiveness and building a more inclusive society. If the shareholders approve a motion submitted to the Annual General Meeting in early April, five of NCC’s eight Board members will be women. In 2017, four of ten members of NCC’s management groups, on average, were women. However, for the company as a whole, a clear majority of employees (87 percent) are men.
“NCC has come a long way and achieved gender equality at the most senior level. But we still have a long road ahead of us when it comes to diversity and gender equality across the entire company, and are therefore working with several initiatives. For us diversity and gender equality issues are key for improving competitiveness,” says Christina Lindbäck, SVP Corporate Sustainability at NCC.
NCC’s long-term objective is that the company’s employees will reflect the society in which we live. To achieve this goal, NCC is working on several initiatives.
Camilla Magnusson, Regional Manager at NCC Infra Stockholm will gather women in production today, March 8, to discuss issues that are important for women working in the construction industry.
“It is vital that the number of women working in production increases, not least so that we can meet our own recruitment needs in the industry. We want to be able to recruit the best talent from the entire population,” says Camilla Magnusson.
NCC conducted a site manager program in Sweden for women only. NCC is also working with gender equality in teams, where the objective is that neither gender will account for more than 70 percent of the team’s members.
To lower the barriers for careers in science and technology, NCC engages in a range of activities to inspire more women to choose careers in engineering.
NCC is a Nordic sponsor of Mattecentrum, an association that offers free help with mathematics to young people. In collaboration with IGE (Introduce a Girl to Engineering) Day, NCC opens selected work sites for young girls for one day.
In 2017, NCC also became involved in PEPP, a mentoring program for young women who, in turn, become mentors for girls in upper-secondary school.
NCC’s women’s network Stella, which works to increase the number of women managers, has been established since 1998.
NCC Job School and NCC New Start are two initiatives to help new residents. Job School in Denmark is a 26-week program to welcome refugees with asylum status and previous experience in the construction sector into the construction industry, and to facilitate their integration. A new Job School was started in Denmark in March 2017, and 15 refugees began their training.
The first round of NCC New Start ended in June 2017, a labor market program for foreign-born engineers who are seeking employment. The program was designed in cooperation with Kunskapsskolan (an independent school) and the Swedish Public Employment Service to meet NCC’s major recruitment needs, and to promote integration and diversity.
To improve gender equality in the industry, NCC took an initiative in October 2017 where we gathered a large number of industry representatives, both employers and employees, to discuss solutions and ways forward.
During the spring, NCC Western Region will conduct a comprehensive program to foster diversity and inclusion, with workshops to help instigate discussions about how our behaviors and conceptions can be perceived and impact others. The discussions will focus on a range of situations involving, for example, gender, a foreign background, language or sexual orientation.
“Unfortunately, we have problems with a macho culture and sexual harassment in our industry and we need to accept our responsibility for bringing about a change,” says Fredrik Johansson, Department Manager, NCC Building, Western Region.
Image: Image of Camilla Magnusson, Regional Manager at NCC Infra Stockholm.