In our last post, we explored the many benefits of improving diversity within a construction or scaffolding team as a business owner - including greater profits and a more successful, inclusive, and ethical business.
However, supervisors and business owners of scaffolding teams are not the only people with important and valued roles to play as members of a scaffolding or construction business. If you’re a team member yourself, you always have lots of influence and can choose how you wish to inspire greater confidence and inclusion for less diverse groups.
In addition, if you are a member of a minority group yourself and you work within a construction or scaffolding business, you’ll always bring your own valued, unique strengths to the team and may face a number of struggles - your wellbeing is important.
In this blog post, we lay out some key ideas we can implement to help improve diversity in the field if you are a scaffolding or construction team member.
How to Support Diversity and Feel Support as a Team Member
As a team member, you can also support diversity as well. One of the key ways you can do this is by taking an interest in human rights and struggles of minority groups – including every group in this list: lesbian, gay, transgender, bi-sexual, queer, and gender fluid people (frequently referred to as LGBTQ people), women, members of other ethnic groups, people with disabilities, and people who are older or younger than the rest of your team.
Actively listening to their stories and reading and sharing what you hear with open discussions in the workplace is a great place to be an ally.
As a member of a minority group, you can find out about supportive organisations online who can help support you if you suffer any discrimination within the workplace. It can feel stressful and overwhelming to go through this, but there are many people out there who will offer support – you are not alone.
Both members of these groups can help by speaking out against discrimination if they see any discrimination happen – whether through the treatment of fellow team members or customers. The law is on your side and many people will want to hear what you have to say and will be there to support you, even though it can feel like a difficult area.
Note (legal disclaimer): we aren’t attorneys and this isn’t legal advice – if you would like legal advice, then we recommend speaking to someone who works within the law, rather than solely taking on board our advice.
A Stronger Business
We hope you found this post on improving diversity within the construction industry helpful as a team member. Our next post, we’ll explore how diversified can be improved within the construction level on a societal level.