3. Over the past five or six years in particular, there’s been an undeniable societal shift in attitudes on diversity and inclusion, gender equality, and cultural shifts/accepted norms. How does the ever-changing society attitude change translate into the workplace?
I think that shift started long before then, but certainly in more recent times we have seen government, regulatory bodies, talent, and the broader community really begin to hold organisations accountable for their role in diversity outcomes, as they should. Organisations, particularly large ones, have the power to make real and lasting change in this regard. And why wouldn’t they? It’s great for business.
We’re two years into our global five-year Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion journey, which has three simple goals; create a culture of respect and inclusion, foster and value diversity; and ensure equity.
4. What do you see as Cromwell’s role in the lives of our people as an employer? Is it as simple as just providing a place to work?
No, we want people to love their time at Cromwell and when they decide it’s time to move on, leave us as better people than when they joined.
For a lot of people, work significantly contributes to their meaning, their purpose, and we’re very keen to help them fulfil that. In fact, at one of our recent Leadership Summits, we focused on how we can help our people reach a state of engagement, by meeting their psychological needs – physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation.
At Cromwell, this encompasses providing for people’s basic needs with good remuneration, stability, and a physically and psychologically safe work environment. Creating a culture that is inclusive, allows people to bring their true self to work, and provides challenging and interesting work is critical. It also involves giving frequent feedback and recognition and the ability for our people to continually grow and develop. And finally, we look to give people a vision and a purpose they can connect with.
We know we play a huge part in people’s lives, and we take that very seriously. We’re far more than a place to work, we really want to help our people achieve their professional and personal purpose.
5. What operational targets has Cromwell set to improve ourself as an employer?
What gets measured, gets done – and we have plenty of targets! In the DEI space, and as part of our commitment to the Property Champions of Change Coalition, we’re using a 40:40:20 metric, a gender pay gap and a gender pay parity target to help keep ourselves accountable to our DEI Strategy.
For those that haven’t heard the term, 40:40:20 is about achieving 40% male, 40% female, and 20% other/discretionary gender representation in our workforce – we’re seeking to achieve that outcome at all levels of our organisation and we have already done so at the Executive, Senior Leader, Team Leader, and Emerging Leader levels.
Our target to reduce the gender pay gap year-on-year is an excellent measure of whether we’re achieving equality, as well as meeting our gender targets. Since setting this target, we’ve reduced our pay gap by over 20%, and we’re still making good progress.
We’ve also set ourselves an employee engagement target of 70%. Engagement is the level of emotional connection our employees have with our business and directly correlates with the level of discretionary effort they’re willing to exert. We saw a 9% increase in employee engagement over the course of 2023 and we’re hoping to keep that trend strong.
Cromwell has completed Stage 2 of our programme of works to install solar panels on buildings at locations across the country, as part of the business’s commitment to meet our long-term ESG targets.
About Stuart Cartledge
