Nicky Smith: Engineering a change of culture

Women are still facing barriers when it comes to acceptance in the construction industry. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

COMMENT:
There are few sectors where the gender gap is starker than in construction and engineering.

As national maintenance manager for HEB Construction Ltd, I oversee road maintenance contracts held by our business throughout New Zealand. HEB Construction, a leader in construction and infrastructure, employs around 900 people nationwide. I'm one of only six female engineers in our Auckland office, and only 14 per cent of engineers in New Zealand are women.

When I look at my career, I always felt accepted, I was lucky that I easily got on with the "boys". I wasn't sensitive, I just got on with things and worked with some great people.

Now I'm at a senior level, I strive to be a role model for and support other women in the company and the industry.

Although there are individual male engineers in the industry who still believe engineering is no place for women, that women lack the hard skills and are inherently too soft for the job, I have witnessed a sea change in attitudes at the top.

Senior staff in my firm want to attract and retain more women. The problem is not a lack of will, but a lack of means. They see the value, but no clear pathway. Engineering businesses do not yet have a proven tool-kit for increasing diversity. There are firms investing in this goal but are missing the mark because they don't know what to do. How do you effect culture change?

A programme I did recently on the leadership mindset got me thinking more deeply about the kind of leadership required here, and how working in a male-dominated industry shaped my own leadership style.

I have relied heavily on my professionalism - it was important to me to be a good engineer, to not lose my craft as I rose into management.

So my default response to a problem that someone in my team brought to me was to solve it, just like a good engineer. I would put the steps in place, and get the people in the room who needed to do it.

The Leadership Mindset Programme, run by the NZLI at the University of Auckland Business School, made me realise there is a lot of value in getting all the people in the room and saying, "here's the problem, let's spend two or three hours working out how we might solve it". It also reinforced the value of not being afraid of having robust discussions and airing a range of opinions, something I already applied.

It strikes me that businesses, and whole industries, need to bring this kind of collaborative, all-things-considered approach to problem-solving to the diversity issue. As an individual female engineer I can make a difference, but I can't shift the culture single-handed.

I can, and do, connect with my female colleagues, facilitate networking, and advocate for women.

I can, and do, call workmates out on non-inclusive language. We still have a habit of starting emails with "Dear gents" and talking about "the boys in the field" and the "ladies in accounts".

When I pull people up, they mostly take it very well - they know I'm doing it because if I don't check them, no one else will. I wouldn't have done that 10, 15 years ago, but now I'm at a senior level and respected in my role, I don't need to worry as much about what people think anymore.

Related to this, I suspect that more formal unconscious bias training would help - sometimes it's the subtle things that make the biggest impact.

I am heartened by the Diversity Agenda campaign which was launched recently by Engineering NZ and the Institute of Architects. The campaign aims to equip employers with the tools they need to address diversity in the profession, and to raise awareness of these issues.

The goal is 20 per cent more women in engineering and architecture roles by 2021. The University of Auckland's Faculty of Engineering, where I am studying for a PhD, has signed on as a foundation partner.

A theme from the leadership mindset course was that pushing boundaries is often personally confronting and difficult, but is exactly where growth happens.

This is true whether you're talking about individuals, organisations or society. Whatis clear is that it is time to push boundaries that are holding women back in this and other male-dominated industries, even if the best way forward is a work in progress.

Nicky Smith received a University of Auckland Alumni Leadership Fellowship to do the Leadership Mindset Programme, run by the New Zealand Leadership Institute. She is a doctoral candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Auckland.