When Huws Gray CEO, Daksh Gupta, received the data and responses to a company-wide employee survey during his first months in the role, he saw encouraging signs that he was at the helm of an organisation that was open to new thinking and ready to embrace ways to improve the diversity of its workforce. In this piece Daksh sets out what he’s learned to date from 18 months in the built environment industry, and what the role of Huws Gray will be in advocating positive change across the sector.
While I am a relative newcomer to the construction industry, my experience in the automotive sector has shown me that there is a lot of similarities between the two industries. Yes, we are working with different product categories and models of business, but many of our businesses are based on multi-site organisations, involve a federated style of operation, and there is a reliance on people focused relationships at the core of both industries.
One of the trends the automotive sector has noticeably reversed over the past decade or so has been to identify a lack of diversity within the workforce, find out why that was the case and then taken action to address the situation. In 2016, for example, a network of CEOs and managing directors called the Automotive 30% Club committed to achieving a minimum of 30% representation of diverse women in key leadership roles by 2030. The 2025 female representation survey results reveal the initiative has already reached 28% of key leadership roles filled by women.
This change needed to happen because the customer base changed – 53% of car buyers are women, and women hold 80% of the influence of the buying decision involved in the purchase of a car.
Some of the conversations we had in the automotive sector 20 years ago are happening in the construction industry now.
While there may be some reactionary backlash against encouraging diversity equity and inclusion in politics, the fact of the matter is that companies that really commit to improving their culture to make it more inclusive, more diverse and more equal in a range of ways just do better. There is data that categorically shows that organisations who hire a diverse range of people have lower staff turnover, better retention and suffer fewer days lost to mental health sign offs. This all helps to manage business costs, so there is a clear business case alongside the moral case that it is the right thing to do.
In March 2024, I had to address the annual Huws Gray conference. I spoke about the importance of improving the diversity of the workforce as a way to mitigate the impact of an ageing workforce, and to be able to engage with the next generation of customer. The next generation is going to be far more tech savvy, more focused on digital ways to conduct their business and they’re going to be far more focused on their customer experience. Just as the automotive sector had to adapt to a shift in customer base, public facing companies in construction need to be able to respond to that challenge now.
I am clear that this is going to take a lot of effort and is not something that could just be imposed on the organisation. You can’t fake culture. It has to be allowed to grow with some guidance and leadership from the senior team – but ultimately is it owned by every member of the team.
In May 2024 when we gathered the result for our company-wide workforce survey, I was pleased to see an 80% participation rate and more than 13,000 comments submitted. I know it was more than 13,000 because I read every single one of them (13,198 if you’re keeping count). It was a really powerful set of data and information from every corner of the business that gave me great encouragement that the people of Huws Gray understand the importance of working to improve and enhance their own workplace.
I’ve been encouraged by what I’ve seen in the rest of the sector too. Huws Gray is a proud strategic partner of the Construction Inclusion Coalition, which is starting the conversation on what organisations can tangibly do to influence positive change within their operation and providing a forum to share information company to company to start the process. The first step is to acknowledge that there is a requirement to change.
We’ve made that first step and have now developed a plan to address what we see as five key challenges within our business: attraction, overcoming bias, education, inclusion and gathering diversity data.
We’re excited to have our new social media manager on board, who will be boosting our social media presence to help us reach a wider, more diverse audience. Our Apprenticeship strategy is in the works too, and we see it as a fantastic opportunity to enhance our diversity. Plus, we’ve been sharing some amazing success stories in our internal newsletter, HG Connected.
To tackle bias, we’ve spent time ensuring that our job adverts appeal to a broader audience and we’re also piloting anonymous CVs to see how they impact our candidate experience.
But attracting diverse talent is just the beginning. We want everyone who joins us to feel connected to our vision and our teams. We’re committed to understanding the barriers faced by under-represented groups so we can focus on the right solutions. We’ve also refined our EDI and Mental Health and Well-being Policies, and our team has created supportive fact sheets on various conditions to help educate our managers.
Education is key. We’ve developed mandatory e-learning for all our leaders and colleagues and our top 60 leaders have participated in an immersive, face-to-face learning day focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion.
We’re working on improving our diversity data too. By tracking key data points, we can ensure our actions are making a real impact.
We’re making great progress and, ultimately, we want to create a workplace where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and we can only do this by taking deliberate action to tackle bias, tracking our progress, and removing barriers for under-represented groups, and that’s what we’re going to do.
This article appears in the May 2025 edition of Builders Merchant News Magazine.
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13,000 reasons for optimism
When Huws Gray CEO, Daksh Gupta, received the data and responses to a company-wide employee survey during his first months in the role, he saw encouraging signs that he was at the helm of an organisation that was open to new thinking and ready to embrace ways to improve the diversity of its workforce. In this piece Daksh sets out what he’s learned to date from 18 months in the built environment industry, and what the role of Huws Gray will be in advocating positive change across the sector.
While I am a relative newcomer to the construction industry, my experience in the automotive sector has shown me that there is a lot of similarities between the two industries. Yes, we are working with different product categories and models of business, but many of our businesses are based on multi-site organisations, involve a federated style of operation, and there is a reliance on people focused relationships at the core of both industries.
One of the trends the automotive sector has noticeably reversed over the past decade or so has been to identify a lack of diversity within the workforce, find out why that was the case and then taken action to address the situation. In 2016, for example, a network of CEOs and managing directors called the Automotive 30% Club committed to achieving a minimum of 30% representation of diverse women in key leadership roles by 2030. The 2025 female representation survey results reveal the initiative has already reached 28% of key leadership roles filled by women.
This change needed to happen because the customer base changed – 53% of car buyers are women, and women hold 80% of the influence of the buying decision involved in the purchase of a car.
Some of the conversations we had in the automotive sector 20 years ago are happening in the construction industry now.
While there may be some reactionary backlash against encouraging diversity equity and inclusion in politics, the fact of the matter is that companies that really commit to improving their culture to make it more inclusive, more diverse and more equal in a range of ways just do better. There is data that categorically shows that organisations who hire a diverse range of people have lower staff turnover, better retention and suffer fewer days lost to mental health sign offs. This all helps to manage business costs, so there is a clear business case alongside the moral case that it is the right thing to do.
In March 2024, I had to address the annual Huws Gray conference. I spoke about the importance of improving the diversity of the workforce as a way to mitigate the impact of an ageing workforce, and to be able to engage with the next generation of customer. The next generation is going to be far more tech savvy, more focused on digital ways to conduct their business and they’re going to be far more focused on their customer experience. Just as the automotive sector had to adapt to a shift in customer base, public facing companies in construction need to be able to respond to that challenge now.
I am clear that this is going to take a lot of effort and is not something that could just be imposed on the organisation. You can’t fake culture. It has to be allowed to grow with some guidance and leadership from the senior team – but ultimately is it owned by every member of the team.
In May 2024 when we gathered the result for our company-wide workforce survey, I was pleased to see an 80% participation rate and more than 13,000 comments submitted. I know it was more than 13,000 because I read every single one of them (13,198 if you’re keeping count). It was a really powerful set of data and information from every corner of the business that gave me great encouragement that the people of Huws Gray understand the importance of working to improve and enhance their own workplace.
I’ve been encouraged by what I’ve seen in the rest of the sector too. Huws Gray is a proud strategic partner of the Construction Inclusion Coalition, which is starting the conversation on what organisations can tangibly do to influence positive change within their operation and providing a forum to share information company to company to start the process. The first step is to acknowledge that there is a requirement to change.
We’ve made that first step and have now developed a plan to address what we see as five key challenges within our business: attraction, overcoming bias, education, inclusion and gathering diversity data.
We’re excited to have our new social media manager on board, who will be boosting our social media presence to help us reach a wider, more diverse audience. Our Apprenticeship strategy is in the works too, and we see it as a fantastic opportunity to enhance our diversity. Plus, we’ve been sharing some amazing success stories in our internal newsletter, HG Connected.
To tackle bias, we’ve spent time ensuring that our job adverts appeal to a broader audience and we’re also piloting anonymous CVs to see how they impact our candidate experience.
But attracting diverse talent is just the beginning. We want everyone who joins us to feel connected to our vision and our teams. We’re committed to understanding the barriers faced by under-represented groups so we can focus on the right solutions. We’ve also refined our EDI and Mental Health and Well-being Policies, and our team has created supportive fact sheets on various conditions to help educate our managers.
Education is key. We’ve developed mandatory e-learning for all our leaders and colleagues and our top 60 leaders have participated in an immersive, face-to-face learning day focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion.
We’re working on improving our diversity data too. By tracking key data points, we can ensure our actions are making a real impact.
We’re making great progress and, ultimately, we want to create a workplace where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and we can only do this by taking deliberate action to tackle bias, tracking our progress, and removing barriers for under-represented groups, and that’s what we’re going to do.
This article appears in the May 2025 edition of Builders Merchant News Magazine.
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