Wednesday 8th March marks this year’s International Women’s Day, so we wanted to take this opportunity to sit down with Commhoist Group CEO, Glynn Carlisle to ask him about the importance of having a diverse workforce.
“It’s just common sense, just over 50% of the UK population is female, any business that excludes the larger part of the available talent pool from their plans is just plain crazy.
Commhoist Group, as a business, wants the very best people for the job, with that in mind there should be no regard for whether they are male, female, or however they choose to identify themselves. The right person for the right role is a fundamental requirement for any good business and a key contributing factor to that business’s success.
Good businesses grow via taking on board and valuing different perspectives and points of view to ensure you not only cover all bases, but you are taking full advantage of the resources and skills within your talent pool. These differing perspectives come from differing life experiences and how you view particular challenges and issues that arise in business. Having such a range of inputs in our business is the spark that generates creativity, productively challenges the status quo and drives improvement and innovation. Such sparks of creativity could and would be missed in an old school stereotypical structure and we as a business would then fail to evolve and grasp new opportunities.
Improving collaboration across teams and customers is a key factor and men, and this is my view, can tend to be somewhat analytical and direct meaning sometimes less strong personalities can be overlooked. With a diverse team with a strong input from female team members, who are proven to be better at reading non-verbal cues, leads to greater inclusion, a broader range of inputs and a better outcome for the business.
Having a broader, more diverse and inclusive workplace also simply makes for a better place to be and work environment. This in turn improves morale as we are giving opportunities to all to show their true potential and capabilities, which helps grow the business whilst ensuring our teams are happy and healthy.
A key success factor for us as a business is to understand and anticipate our customers’ needs and support them in the delivery of their business demands. They themselves can come from a diverse range of backgrounds and life experiences, as such the better we can reflect our customers’ needs the better we can function and interact with them.
The positive of this is that diversity of gender and ethnicity in a forward looking and thinking business can snowball and grow. The recruitment of the wider staff base will be impacted by potential candidates looking at our business and deciding if we meet their ideals for diversity at work and this can be a major factor in bringing on new talent as well as developing the talent we already have.
Gender diversity not only improves a business in its day-to-day functioning, making it a better place to be, but also makes it a better investment for existing and potential future shareholders. Having a reflection of the general talent pool, female, male, ethnicity, or however you decide to identify, and a better reflection of our customers profiles makes for improved efficiency and in turn bottom line profitability.
We are proud of the fact that of our 4 member Senior Management Team at Commhoist we have a 50/50 split female and male with vital roles such as Operations Director and Finance Director both being ladies. We have a good balance of gender equality within our projects teams and office staff however our field staff remains very much male dominated which is an area we are keen to explore and understand as to why it remains so.
Following our successful collaboration with Wigan Athletic Community Trust with local Primary Schools telling us how we can improve our environmental impact we are reconnecting with them for a project on improving gender equality in our industry. We will be working with Wigan ACT to speak with local High Schools to try and see how we can encourage more female involvement in our industry, particularly in the field operations. What can we do to inform boys of their careers prospects in Lifting & Logistics, but with modern methods, encouraging girls that this industry is indeed a strong career option for themselves as well.”
Glynn Carlisle, Commhoist Group CEO
