Can including women in the Monday morning sports debrief really change the culture of Australia’s construction industry? Construction superstar Alison Mirams thinks so.

It’s an unusual piece of advice, but characteristically canny from the woman who built a boutique construction company with a $1.5 billion pipeline in just five years.

Speaking at Consult Australia’s recent Breaking Barriers & Building Inclusion event, Alison suggested the routine chat about the weekend’s sporting results could be a catalyst for change.

“My best friend at uni taught me the rules of every sport and I did not realise at the time what a gift he was giving me,” Alison, who stepped down as Executive Chair of Roberts Co earlier this year, told a rapt audience.

“The sporting conversation is not important. It’s the conversation that follows that’s important…. ‘What deal are you working on? What project? You need to talk to that person. I know that person, I’ll introduce you.’ That is the informal networking that men get when women have left the room,” Alison said.

Alison’s ‘gift’ to Consult Australia’s members was a series of hard-won insights from her three-decade career in construction. When she commenced her career “there was porn in the toolboxes, there was porn on the lunchroom walls… the first project I was on I didn’t have a toilet on site… I had to leave site and walk down the road to a commercial office,” she said.

“So, have we come a long way? Yes, we have. But we have a long way to go.”

A national narrative, an industry conversation

Alison was joined by a powerhouse panel of leaders who came together to champion diversity, inclusion and cultural change as part of Consult Australia’s Breaking Barriers & Building Inclusion program in mid-May.

Consult Australia designed Breaking Barriers & Building Inclusion for small and medium sized member companies that may be testing diversity and inclusion initiatives or may have ambitions but don’t know what to do next.

“We all have a role to play in creating a safe, respectful and inclusive workplaces,” said Consult Australia CEO Jonathan Cartledge as he set the scene. The growing national debate about gender-based violence intersects with an opportunity for business leaders to drive change in their workplaces, Jonathan suggested.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2022 National Survey found just over half of all women working in construction reported sexual harassment over the five-year period. And a study for Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, released in April, found one in seven adults reported using technology to sexually harass a colleague, with male-dominated workplaces the worst.

“The cost of sexual harassment to business and the economy is estimated at close to $3 billion annually in Australia, and employers bear about 70% of that cost in lost productivity, staff turnover and managers’ time,” Jonathan observed. 

These statistics are “difficult to process”, said David Raftery, Arcadis’ Country Director. David had recently attended the Women’s March in Melbourne with his daughters (and posted his profound reflections on LinkedIn). 

David pointed to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' data on personal safety, which found more than one million women do not use public transport alone after dark because they feel unsafe. The solution, David said, is not to host more design workshops. The solution is to “change behaviour”. Business leaders play a central role in cultivating workplaces that prioritise “a sense of inclusivity, empathy and caring”.

Beyond compliance, towards high performing cultures

All Australian organisations are now legally required to address sexual harassment and sex discrimination under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984. Known as ‘the positive duty’, the new regulatory framework was introduced in December 2023. The Australian Human Rights Commission has new powers to investigate and enforce compliance. Businesses can now be liable for failing to meet their positive duty obligations and face legal and reputational risk, even if a complaint has not been made. 

Compliance with legislation is the minimum, not a measure of success, David Raftery noted. A benchmark of “no one did anything illegal to me today” will not cultivate a high-performance culture.

Fellow panellist Faye Calderone agreed. “Get the culture right and compliance will sort itself out,” she said. “If you have a flexible, supportive, respectful environment – one where people feel included and like they belong… you won’t have bullying, sexual harassment or hostile conduct. You won’t have regulators knocking at the door.”

An employment lawyer with Hall & Wilcox and author of the new book Broken to Safe: Tackling toxic workplaces and burnout, Faye suggested leaders could embrace a new acronym: SAFE. “We Start with baseline compliance. We Align with purpose and values. We Flourish with flexibility. And we Exit jerks. Because that’s what good leadership is about.”

New conversations, new champions

The issue of workplace misconduct and sexual harassment can make some male leaders feel uncomfortable and unsure of how to proceed, observed Coleen McKinnon, lead advisor for the Consult Australia Champions of Change.

“It can be quite confronting to the point that we’re witnessing some pushback from men,” Coleen said. The founder of Inclusivity Quotient, Coleen works with culture expert and former McKinsey leader Paul Collings, who was also on the panel, to support leaders in largely male-dominated industries to build inclusive workplaces. 

A “top-down mandated approach” to diversity targets often leads to backlash, complaints of reverse discrimination and disengagement, Coleen said. Instead, Coleen and Paul guide male leaders through a process to help them understand how historical context plays into current barriers and biases confronting women. They ask men to reflect on the experiences in their own past – whether that's on the football field or in the classroom – and how that may have shaped their views of gender. This process helps men to “make invisible beliefs visible” Paul said.

Challenging long-held beliefs can be confronting, but the benefits are manifold, Paul added. Workers in construction – Australia’s most male-dominated industry – are six times more likely to die from suicide than they are from an accident. And the Man Box Report 2024 found men who hold traditional ideas of gender roles are seven times more likely to have suicidal thoughts. 

We are trying to draw together some complex threads, and we need every brilliant mind to focus on the challenge. So, why aren’t more men engaged in this important conversation? 

“A lot of times men don't know what to do,” Paul reflected. Practical action – like strategies to help people overcome the bystander effect and call out bad behaviour, or programs that help men to mentor and sponsor women – are good places to start.

Education comes before targets, and the best advocates often come from unlikely quarters, David Raftery suggested. “Find the potential naysayer, the curmudgeon, the cynic or the heretic in the village.” This person, if they are convinced of the importance of cultural change, will become the biggest champion.

Speaking from the floor, James Phillis, Chair of the Consult Australia Champions of Change, applauded the event’s gender balanced panel. Small choices added up to big change, he said.

 
Men make up 88% of Australia’s construction industry overall, and just 2% of site roles are held by women, so there is no easy answer to the diversity challenge. As Alison Mirams said: “It’s not a quick fix. It’s a very long fix.” 

If you missed this event, you can watch a recording of the conversation. 

And don’t miss Consult Australia’s free-for-members Breaking Barriers & Building Inclusion Executive Workshop on Friday 7 June in Sydney, which has been tailored to help leaders in small and medium companies take the right steps forward for their businesses.

Australia's national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Support is also available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978.