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November 2005

Halcrow announced as a finalist in the employer of the year awards

Halcrow has been named as a finalist in the Working Families/UKRC Award for Women in SET in this year's prestigious Employer of the Year Awards.

The Award is designed to reward employers' practices on gender equality, in particular the actions they take to ensure their employees have a good work-life balance and the measures they have in place to encourage flexible working. These issues are particularly crucial to addressing the barriers faced by women in science, engineering, technology (SET) and the built environment.

Halcrow is competing against four other companies for the award (Accenture; Happy Ltd; Hewlett Packard and Jaguar and Land Rover). Mandy Clarke, Halcrow's director for human resources, said: "I am delighted that we have been short-listed as a finalist, the only construction industry representative amongst the five short-listed. We understand the issues and work-life barriers that are faced by our employees and have worked to assist them in dealing with these."

"We have not looked at focusing on women or providing female-only solutions, just emphasised that flexible benefits and family friendly policies and practices should be available to all. Our approach has been very effective in assisting staff to have an appropriate work-life balance - this is Halcrow's real strength and it is valued by all employees."

Halcrow's employment package is aimed at attracting and retaining the best people. Benefits include flexitime, 24 days' holiday, private medical care, contributory pension, healthcare insurance, and a range of flexible benefits which employees can chose such as childcare vouchers, dental insurance and the ability to purchase additional holidays. Their open and positive culture has resulted in a rise in female senior managers from less than 1% to 6% in under four years and 26% of employees at Halcrow are female. This is well above the construction industry norm.

Working Families, chief executive, Sarah Jackson said: "We are really impressed by the standard of entries this year and we look forward to finding out more about the finalists' policies and practice when we interview them. We feel sure that their examples will inspire other employers to create workplaces which not only enable work-life balance for their employees, but also bring tangible business benefits to their organisations."

Annette Williams, director of the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET (UKRC), said: "We are thrilled to be sponsoring this award and to see such a high quality of entrants. The finalists have demonstrated that they are implementing some really excellent practice and are leading the way for others to follow."

SET Employers are increasingly offering work-life balance and flexible working opportunities as a way of attracting, and retaining women. Women now represent 51% of the total UK workforce and yet only account for 24.1% in SET. In construction this figure shrinks lower still to just 9%.

The winner of the UKRC Women in SET Award will be awarded by Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at a ceremony on 7 December.

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