The construction industry is still one of the most male-dominated industries in the world. In Europe and the United States, the proportion of women is around 10 percent - and most of them hold administrative or office jobs.
However, if you ask women who work in the construction industry, you get a positive outlook. In a US survey conducted in 2022, 80 percent of the responding women said they loved their job.
More women increase productivity in construction companies
Recruiting more women is a challenge that many companies are trying to solve today. With increased focus on equality and diversity, it is a must to actively work with these issues.
Having more even gender distribution is not just a hygiene factor, but also leads to greater success. According to the Peterson Institute, construction companies with more female employees have increased productivity. Among the companies that are among the top 25 percent in terms of gender equality, 46 percent have a greater chance of outperforming their competitors.
Another study conducted by Credit Suisse shows that companies, where half of the managers are women, have ten percent higher returns than companies with fewer female managers.
Finding personnel is difficult in the construction industry
The need for more women in the industry is something that Maria Wilund, PR manager at Peab, one of the leading construction and civil engineering companies in the Nordics, agrees with.
– We know that mixed workplaces perform better, but we also have a major skills shortage. Our industry has difficulty finding personnel to recruit, so both men and women are needed - it is not just men who can build society.
Peab's strategic goal is to recruit more women than are graduating from relevant education. To increase the proportion of women who choose to join the industry, they have started "Building Year”.
"Building Year" is a paid apprenticeship year for women. With this, they aim to create debate in society and concretely make young girls aware of the industry, says Maria.
Want to read more about how Storykit helps property and real estate development companies capitalize on their communication? Learn more here!
Lifting up women increases engagement
"Building Year" is a broad campaign for Peab, but they also continuously work on lifting up women: getting more interested in the industry and ultimately wanting to work for Peab.
Social media has proven to be very effective for Peab in terms of employer branding.
– We used to work with traditional job ads when we were recruiting, and we noticed an incredible response with many more applications when we started recruiting on social media.
What type of content on social media have you seen the best response to?
– It is clearly when we highlight our own employees.
What is your best tip for reaching women on social media?
– What works best for us is to work with recognition. To attract women, we must show the women who work for us, who are "ordinary" women that most people can identify with. For example, we have a series where female employees have filmed themselves to get more women to join the industry. These have had incredibly high engagement on social media, concludes Maria Wilund.
This is how Peab increased their productivity on social media and successfully recruited more women
At Peab, they create content in different formats for different channels - both for internal and external communication. Video is an important format for reaching out - whether it's about advertising, internal training, or simple videos optimized for social media.
With Storykit, they can easily produce the number of videos they needed.
– Just in the past year, we have produced more than 300 films with the help of Storykit, says Carina Nilsson, who is in charge of communications.
What are the important ingredients to get women interested in you as an employer in the content you create?
– Being honest and showing what reality is and looks like. It's important to have a personal tone with the recipient. If you want to reach women, it's important to show women in the content we create to give a sense of identification. We try to use our employees in all the content we produce for social media as much as possible, says Carina.
3 employer branding videos Peab produced in Storykit
In this video, they talk about how Peab's permanent offices and construction sites have been equipped with free menstrual products.
In this video, they highlight Peab's support for "All Women's Houses".
This video addresses the importance of a healthier work environment.
Want to read more about how Storykit helps property and real estate development companies capitalize on their communication? Learn more here!
