Tony Bickerstaff of Costain on the link between inclusivity and its approach to wellbeing

I'm seeing a lot more interest in diversity and inclusion (D&I) from our investors and it is also now a criteria in many business tenders. There is a definite link between inclusivity and Costain's approach to wellbeing. We've made sure that our approach isn't just about people who work in head office, or even just our employees; it is our extended workforce including suppliers and contractors as well.

Our wellbeing strategy is also inclusive from a gender and LGBT perspective, with a wellbeing steering group which includes the chair for our gender network and also our LGBT lead.

For the second year running, we’ve been included in the Times Top 50 Employers for women, and this year we also received the Times’ Game Changer Award which recognises how we are responding to diversity and inclusion in an industry that is incredibly white-male dominated.

One of the ways of doing that is to create an environment where diversity is possible. If we demand an inflexible 7.30 start, how can that possibly be a good starting point for attracting talent?

You’ve got to be determined to say ‘this can be done’. Last year, we took the decision to say that 50% of our graduates would be female. The counter argument we had was that the figure doesn’t represent the pool of people in our industry. But we take on 70 graduates, so that’s 35 females. Surely no-one can say that there are not 35 women who would be interested!

A key role of employers is creating environments where people thrive. Of course investors always want to see pounds and pence returns, but the message is getting through that when organisations do embed wellbeing and make it inclusive, the long-term returns will come.

I spend a lot of my time with investors in the business and I would love to say that wellbeing is a topic that we discuss in depth, but their priority is to make sure that we are continuing to generate returns. However, wellbeing’s importance is beginning to be talked about by investors and that is positive – we want them to be involved with us for the long-term, and wellbeing is a part of that.

It won’t surprise anyone to know that, as a major infrastructure consultant and provider, Costain has always been strong on occupational health and safety. However, wellbeing had long been perceived as subsidiary rather than sitting equally alongside safety.

I realised there was an opportunity to bring the two closer together and took ownership of wellbeing within our business.

My main reason for doing so was to fulfil our strategic imperative to attract and retain the best talent that we can. One of the ways we can do that is to say that when you work for, or with, Costain, we will help you to be at your best, so that the company works at its best.

Our approach to wellbeing is not directive - we have around 100 locations, and they don’t want or need any more initiatives from head office. Instead we’ve given our people permission to decide for themselves what will work for their teams, although we do have support mechanisms in place for them as well.

For example, we get asked for rules on flexible working, but we want to be able to say ‘if you have a team that you think would work better flexibly, just go ahead and do it’.

I have deliberately not made wellbeing reliant on metrics such as reductions in sickness absence. Although we do have measures, these are a byproduct of our approach, not a driver. For example, we now have over 350 Mental Health First Aiders and have put over 1,000 line managers through training on mental health awareness. We have also talked about the broader workforce including suppliers and contractors, and that is an important step from a behavioural viewpoint. More importantly, it is about how we can help everyone to be at their best.

The author is Tony Bickerstaff, chief financial officer at Costain.