Equality & Diversity

Equality & Diversity is about giving value to ALL workers, benefiting from and embracing their differences. UK legislation sets minimum standards for companies to support successful workplace diversity and equality – covering age, disability, race, religion, gender and sexual orientation among others.

At TRAD we want to go beyond these minimum standards and set the bar much higher when building a fully inclusive environment that contributes to our employee’s well-being and success.

Equal opportunity is often seen as treating everyone in exactly the same way. But to provide real equality of opportunity, people need to be treated differently in ways that are fair and tailored to their needs, and also in ways that are aligned to business needs and objectives.

At TRAD our workplace is already a diverse and inclusive environment but we are implementing initiatives that will formalise, inspire and promote more successes across the group.

AGE POSITIVE

At TRAD we see the benefit of encouraging more young people to enter our sector, they bring different ideas, knowledge and energy, and we should value their perspectives. There are strong apprenticeship schemes across the industry, and we plan to maintain, strengthen and grow them. At the other end of the scale we also want to offer opportunities to those who perhaps no longer want to be ‘on the tools’ but to move into another type of role within the company. Age is not a defining factor.

GENDER DIVERSE

Women are under-represented across construction generally, and in scaffolding in particular. The nature of the work may be largely to blame in some respects, but there are many positions in the TRAD Group where women have been encouraged and mentored, and gone on to excel in senior positions such as surveying and estimating. We aim to create more mentoring and training schemes to give women the chance to become operational heads within supervision and contracts management, and eventually board directors.

Des Moore, TRAD Group CEO is committed to increasing diversity across the industry, and in particular to inspiring more women to pursue careers in construction – especially in management and leadership roles. He says: “Women are under-represented across construction generally, and in scaffolding in particular. While the nature of the work may be partly to blame, there are many positions at TRAD where women have made major contributions to our success, for example in areas such as surveying and estimating.”

UK legislation sets minimum standards for companies to support workplace diversity and equality. Everyone would like to go beyond these minimum standards and set the bar much higher. The aim is to establish a fully inclusive environment contributing to employees’ well-being and success within the industry. “As an example, one of our employees, is currently being trained, coached and mentored to become a member of our contracts team, which manages more than 300 scaffolders on site”, added Des.  “We’re also supporting her through university day release; as she earns academic qualifications this will further help advance her professional career.

“We hope the rest of the industry will follow the initiative shown by the NASC by supporting, encouraging and promoting the development of the ‘Inspire Me’ campaign objectives. At TRAD, we’ve found encouraging women to pursue careers in our sector is not only the right thing to do in terms of equality of opportunity, it gives us significant competitive advantage. How? By enabling us to draw on the different skills, ideas and perspectives  women bring to our business.” Both Construction News and The TRAD Group, know how important people are to the success of the business. They believe in teamwork, mutual support and encouraging all staff to continually develop their skills and extend their careers, to become the best they can be. The inspire scheme looks set achieve this. It’s just good business!

TRAD’s ethos, defined in the TRAD Group Policy, is to prevent discrimination and to attract the best employees and workers regardless of gender, gender reassignment, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, race, colour, age, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, political or other beliefs. Click here to see our policy.

EXPERIENCE & EDUCATION

With over 1,000 employees in the TRAD Group we have a varied skillset that includes individuals with academic qualification, vocational training, professional qualifications and no formal qualifications at all. We want to ensure that everyone knows about the opportunities open to them through supported training and mentoring programmes to allow them the opportunity for career progression such as our own Knowledge Inspired mentoring programme. Opportunities are available to everyone though hard work, dedication and competence. Workplace diversity and equality is about valuing every employee as an individual.

Read TRAD Scaffolding’s Equality & Inclusion in Practice