Mansell Construction Services: Equality and Diversity

We were commissioned by Mansell to discover how the company can build on current good practice in relation to equality and diversity. This included identifying any areas that could be strengthened to improve business performance.

Mansell is a very successful, award winning company, and clearly a leader in its field. In order to maintain this position Mansell is moving forward in many areas typified by an exciting and innovative approach to health and safety. An important ingredient in the ongoing success of the company is to ensure Mansell is also moving ahead on diversity

Mansell’s aim is to ensure that diversity issues are mainstreamed into the day to day work of the business. Therefore, we worked with Mansell to ensure that diversity is relevant to every aspect of the business whether that is people management, winning more bids, brand management or recruitment and selection.

The first phase of the project involved getting to know Mansell, by reading documents and meeting people. We met with key people within the company and interviewd them on equality and diversity issues. Interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes. They were informal in style, and individuals knew that the specifics of what they said were confidential so that they felt more able to speak freely. The interviews covered the following areas:

• Introductions and an explanation of the process;
• Current and past roles and responsibilities;
• Things that work well;
• Things that could be improved; and
• Thoughts about how things could be improved.

Several themes emerged from the interviews that informed our report and our recommendations. These range from good will towards the companies and different levels of understanding towards equality and diversity issues. However, it was clear that there is much good practice for Mansell to build on, in terms of an enviable reputation in the industry, specific practices and a loyal and committed staff. There are also clear ways in which Mansell can build on these strengths to ensure that the business benefits of diversity are widely and consistently understood and acted on.

We gave several recommendations that could be immediately implemented and others that were based more on long term goals. Some of these recommendations were:

• Design and deliver sessions as soon as possible for managers on possible called ‘Winning more Bids’. Apart from immediate business benefits, these sessions will also assist some people to understand the business case for Mansell attending to diversity to a greater extent.
• Design and deliver sessions for HR managers to ensure they have an opportunity to discuss and disseminate best practice.