Gender Diversity in Property Management

Introduction

Real Estate Management (UK) Limited (REM) provides Property Asset management and development services across London’s finest real estate. REM currently manage a £3.5bn investment portfolio comprising of London’s most high-profile properties such as Western Europe’s tallest building - The Shard, The News Building, The Retail Arcade and residential development project – Shard Place at Shard Quarter, Park House in North Mayfair and 48 Pall Mall in St James’s. REM as an organisation conducts Equal Opportunities monitoring on all new joiners, however, the information is not analysed. REM is a predominantly male environment and not diverse enough and this is hampering on our ability to compete in the Property Management sector. Several of potential investors are overseas (Malaysia, China and Middle East) however our demographic internally does not reflect this and means that we are unable to understand their respective cultures and have been unsuccessful in several of our bids for Property Management work.

The company has 61 employees, 36% being women. With only three women in senior position representing 20%, demonstrate a wide gap in gender diversity. In larger UK workplace spectrum, the country scored 66.2% on its focus of advancing gender equality. The REM data reflects the full-time equivalent (FTE) employment rate showing women lagging behind men by roughly 20% (Boffey, 2017). According to Consultancy.uk (2018), the proportion of organization with women in senior positions is 24% in 2017 a decline of 3% from previous year’s data. Despite repeated and heightened gender diversity and inclusiveness in workplace, studies still show a wide disproportion in male-female employee ratio.

Problem statement

Despite diversity shown to have significant positive influence to an organisations performance, growth, and employee engagement, some industries and organisations have made slow progress in bridging this gender diversity gap. Studies have demonstrated that ratio of male to female in the construction industry and related fields (real estate, development management, construction management and property management) and in senior management position is low giving the industry the reputation of being ‘male dominated’. Although campaigns have intensified coupled with profession demands on HR aimed at outlining the gender disparities, workforce efficiency, and seeking ways of reducing gender ratio in the field as well as across all departments and levels, progress is notably slow (CIPD, 2015a; CIPD 2016; Patrick, and Kumar, 2012). Therefore, this study intends to explore from human resource (HR) perspective, the challenges, and difficulties to progress in bridging gender diversity in property management despite evidence demonstrating it would be beneficial to the industry’s growth, performance, and sustainability.

Aim

The purpose of this study is to explore and analyses the challenges and difficulties of promoting of gender diversity by ensuring the disproportion are reducing. This will be done in the context of property management field in the UK.

Initial Critical Literature Review

In the chapter, this study will look into the theorised ideas, findings, and inferences made by previous researchers related to gender diversity and HR management.

Theoretical concepts of diversity in workplace

Researchers have come up with theories and approaches to managing diversity in work environment-arguing integration of diverse workplace aids in meeting an organisation’s strategic goals effectively. The main approaches are the Resource Based Theory of Diversity Management and Institutional Theory of Diversity Management. According to Yang and Konrad (2011), the institutional theory of managing diversity bases its argument on linkage between organisational structures, culture and social environment it operates in. Ideally, the culture, ideals, and employee behaviour held by an organisation reflects and are limited by values and norms within an environment it bases its operation (Barak, 2016; Harvey, and Allard, 2015). As pointed by Herring (2009), this includes social values, dominant beliefs, government policies, and rules and regulations. Based on the theory, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2011) argued that although the law may demand diversity and equality in workplace, inclusiveness funnels down to community beliefs, culture, and norms. On the other hand, resource-based of diversity management views implementation of diversity with effects on resources such as physical capital, financial outcome, and human resources (Yang, and Konrad, 2011; Wan, et al., 2011; Barney, et al., 2011). According to Hitt (2016), organisations measure the individuals to employ based on its current financial status and market performance. The others areas this chapter will explore include management of diversity, gender diversity in workplace, and influence of diverse workplace.

Diversity in workplace

The concerns associated with diversity has dominated business and organisation environment over the past century culminating in equal representation and opportunities. As highlighted by McMahon (2010) and Sabharwal (2014), researchers and professionals have increasingly promoted diversity of religious beliefs, cultural background, ethnic group, sexual orientation, race, and disability, as holding significant beneficial factors for organisational and business growth, performance, and sustainability. In its report, CIPD exemplified the significance of promoting a balance between social responsibility, enhancing unique role played by social members and firm’s efficiency (CIPD, 2018). An inclusive workforces comprising of individuals with different backgrounds and personality helps in capturing a greater share and wider consumer segment (Guillaume, et al., 2017; Barak, 2016). According to Guillaume et al. (2017), different demographic characteristics of employees have been found to be a major driver in an organisation’s success. In addition to enhancing creativity, innovation, and different perspectives to a firm or team, studies conducted by McKinsey (2018) indicating that companies with ethnically and racially diverse management exhibited 35% likelihood of financial returns in comparison to other firms. According to Gallup (2016) findings, gender diversity predicts financial outcome of a business entities irrespective of the industry. Similarly, the findings demonstrated that combination of gender diversity and employee engagement lead to 46% to 58% higher financial performance. The survey conducted by PwC found that 61% of the professionals in the real estate industry believed that diversity enhances positively business bottom line with 80% of women holding that addressing the issues would increase job satisfaction (PwC, 2018).

Challenges in integrating diverse workforce

Nevertheless, the success of diversity concepts goes beyond hiring individuals. Having different personalities and backgrounds does not guarantee performance improvement or financial success but inclusiveness consisting of involvement within the work environment does. According to Simons & Rowland (2011) and Nederveen Pieterse et al. (2013), diversity whether gender, racial, or cultural can be of a competitive advantage to an organization if it is grounded in the right environment. For instance, the findings by Gallup found that manager-employee relationship boils down to shared values. The Guardian report that the progress in closing the gender gap in employment remain slow with the UK showing considerably low change in the last decade (Boffey, 2017). Gender inequality is widespread in science related fields, engineering, and construction industry as well as in management with this areas dominated by men grounded on notion of male masculinity (Campbell, and Mínguez-Vera, 2008; Patrick, and Kumar, 2012; Faulkner, 2009). According to CIPD, although leaders in workplace are responsible to organization efficiency but they lack skills and behaviour set needed to get the best out of people (Zheltoukhova, and Baczor, 2016; CIPD, 2015b; CIPD, 2016).

Methodology

Given that the research intends to explore and understand social factors in form of diversity in workplace looking into reasons to why integration of diverse work environment has failed to attain it expected results and inclusivity, this study will follow qualitative research approach. As stated by Maxwell (2012), the approach explores the underlying factors, in this case gender diversity, employee engagement, employee-management relationship, essence of diverse workplace in an attempt to solve research problem and address pre-formulated objectives. In data collection, it will have semi-structure questionnaire with open and close-end questions distributed through online platforms to individuals within property management across the UK driven by need to capture individual perspective on diversity variables. It intends to collect data from 150 participants identified and selected randomly. This sample size will be larger enough to capture insight into reasons and challenge of addressing gender diversity and sufficient for qualitative analysis without overlooking participants views. Identify and verifying individuals and importantly the truthfulness of the response given can be problematic especially given that online platforms will be used to distribute the questionnaires.

Ethical Consideration

The collected data will be subjected to rigorous scrutiny examining its relevance and applicability of the data to the research topic. Consider individual privacy and beliefs as well as academic rigour by having consent forms for participants and upholding truthiness and high standards throughout research process.

Reference List

Barak, M.E.M., 2016. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.

Barney, J.B., Ketchen Jr, D.J. and Wright, M., 2011. The future of resource-based theory: revitalization or decline?. Journal of management, 37(5), pp.1299-1315.

Campbell, K. and Mínguez-Vera, A., 2008. Gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance. Journal of business ethics, 83(3), pp.435-451.

CIPD. (2018). HR VIEWS OF OUR Winter 2016–17 PROFESSION (pp. 1-36). London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Faulkner, W., 2009. Doing gender in engineering workplace cultures. I. Observations from the field. Engineering Studies, 1(1), pp.3-18.

Guillaume, Y.R., Dawson, J.F., Otaye‐Ebede, L., Woods, S.A. and West, M.A., 2017. Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of workplace diversity?. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), pp.276-303.

Harvey, C.P. and Allard, M., 2015. Understanding and managing diversity: Readings, cases, and exercises. Pearson.

Herring, C., 2009. Does diversity pay?: Race, gender, and the business case for diversity. American Sociological Review, 74(2), pp.208-224.

Hitt, M.A., Xu, K. and Carnes, C.M., 2016. Resource based theory in operations management research. Journal of Operations Management, 41, pp.77-94.

Maxwell, J.A., 2012. Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (Vol. 41). Sage publications.

McMahon, A.M., 2010. Does workplace diversity matter? A survey of empirical studies on diversity and firm performance, 2000-09. Journal of Diversity Management, 5(2), pp.37-48.

Nederveen Pieterse, A., Van Knippenberg, D. and Van Dierendonck, D., 2013. Cultural diversity and team performance: The role of team member goal orientation. Academy of Management Journal, 56(3), pp.782-804.

Patrick, H.A. and Kumar, V.R., 2012. Managing workplace diversity: Issues and challenges. Sage Open, 2(2), p.2158244012444615.

Sabharwal, M., 2014. Is diversity management sufficient? Organizational inclusion to further performance. Public Personnel Management, 43(2), pp.197-217.

Simons, S.M. and Rowland, K.N., 2011. Diversity and its impact on organizational performance: The influence of diversity constructions on expectations and outcomes. Journal of technology management & innovation, 6(3), pp.171-183.

Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C., 2011. Riding the waves of culture: Understanding diversity in global business. Nicholas Brealey International.

Wan, W.P., Hoskisson, R.E., Short, J.C. and Yiu, D.W., 2011. Resource-based theory and corporate diversification: Accomplishments and opportunities. Journal of Management, 37(5), pp.1335-1368.

Yang, Y. and Konrad, A.M., 2011. Understanding diversity management practices: Implications of institutional theory and resource-based theory. Group & Organization Management, 36(1), pp.6-38.

Zheltoukhova, K. and Baczor, L., 2016. From best to good practice HR: developing principles for the profession. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London.[Google Scholar].