Building resilience and capability: Shaping the future of Morgan Sindall Construction

Case study

Norma Odain-Hines Social Value Manager London and Home Counties Time with business: 2 years, 1 month

My boss nominated me to take part Shaping our Future. I hadn’t long joined the company and – to be honest – I was a bit sceptical when I found out I was going to be on the diversity and inclusion project group. As a black woman in my 50s, I was getting fed up of talking about ED&I; I just wanted to get on and do my job. At first, I took a bit of a back seat, just watching and allowing others in my group to speak on the subject, because I feel sometimes when you are a woman of colour, people sit there waiting for you to tell them what you think they should do. I found it really interesting – and something must have been right, because I’m still on the working group looking at implementation of some of the recommendations we came up with for the business. The training at the front was intense but, for me, was the best thing about it. Without that, I don’t think the programme would have had the same impact. It helped get people looking outside of their own personal experience and thinking differently about what inclusion means. In our project group, we came up with a lot of recommendations for improving Morgan Sindall’s ED&I. Personally, I don’t agree with setting targets and quotas. Lots of businesses do it, but what happens when those targets aren’t met? I’m a firm believer in hiring the people that can do the job. If you look at your processes and get the educational outreach right, then you’ll have an even playing field. If your business is an attractive place to work and everyone in it and your supply chain is on board, then these things will happen automatically. I think Morgan Sindall understands that.

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