Women into Construction (WiC) along with the Home Builders Federation – Skills Partnership (HBSP) and nine major home builders were delighted to celebrate the 47 amazing women who completed our Women into Home Building programme at our end of year event hosted at Openreach’s Snow Hill office in Birmingham on Wednesday.  The event was a fantastic opportunity to hear from both our women and employer partners as we reflect on the challenges and successes of the first year of a long-term commitment to change the face of the Home Building sector by WiC and HBF.

This innovative project was co-designed and co-delivered by WiC and HBF with representatives from Barratt Developments PLC, Bellway, Cala, The Hill Group, Keepmoat, Persimmon, Redrow, St Modwen and the Vistry Group. Our aims were clear – we wanted to raise awareness of careers in home building and specifically site management to a wider audience of women than were currently being engaged by the Home Builders.  We wanted to open up opportunities within this sector by providing practical training, work experience and connections to companies across the country and ultimately, we wanted to diversify the talent pool for recruitment, connecting a much wider range of candidates to these employers than they would ordinarily attract by their usual means.

The programme was delivered over 3 cohorts during 2023 and included an online Information session and site visit, a weeklong online Insight week and two weeks work experience at company locations across the UK.  ​We had an overwhelming response to the programme, engaging with 160 women, providing in depth support to 69 and supporting 47 through the 3 week programme of Insight training and work placements with employer partners.  WiC provided travel and childcare expenses to women whilst on placement, removing barriers to participation for all.

The high calibre, enthusiastic women, represented a diverse pool of talent from different locations, ethnic groups, disabilities, previous work experience, transferrable skills, and life experience. 47% of participants were aged over 40 years and over 70% had a previous degree qualification and were changing careers from other sectors such as Education, Healthcare, Law, Art & Design and Commerce, proving that construction is an attractive second career proposition for women. 100% of participants felt their knowledge and understanding of the roles in home building had improved and that they knew better what employers were looking for when applying for these roles.  One participant stated: ‘I feel more confident and capable. I feel enthusiastic about the future. I have, despite my fears, had an experience in the construction industry I feel is going to open doors I once believed were locked to me’.

For the employers, they were astounded by the calibre and diversity of the women applying and found that the biggest benefit to the programme was their increased understanding of the barriers women faced entering the industry. The programme has enabled them to increase awareness across their build sites of the benefits of increasing diversity in their teams and how more women on site will add value to their teams.

This unique programme, with its collaborative approach at its heart, offered some fantastic experiences for the women in what was a very challenging year in the home building sector, and despite fewer vacancies on offer than hoped, we are delighted that 9 women from our first two cohorts have already found employment in the sector. As we enter 2024, there is a confidence amongst the employer partners that the sector will bounce back and recruitment, training and apprenticeship opportunities will be available for our alumni and future participants of this programme.

We have compiled an Impact report detailing the outcomes and learnings from our first year.  You can find the full report here.

We are pleased to announce that Year 2 of the programme will be launching in March 24 with new employers on board as well as our core partnership members. If you are interested in applying, you can find out more information on our dedicated programme page here.