The built environment industry will be more effective to all if diverse voices are included, which intensifies the very present need for greater equity and inclusion. But, what does this look like in practice? How can organisations contribute to cultivating a more inclusive industry?
Nathan Spencer is Director at UKREiiF, and he joins RICS’ Sybil Taunton to discuss strategies for leading the industry towards a more inclusive environment, and the long-standing importance of social value as awareness grows around matters of diversity, equity and inclusion.
This episode of The RICS Podcast covers:
UK REiiF
https://www.ukreiif.com/
The built environment industry will be more effective to all if diverse voices are included, which intensifies the very present need for greater equity and inclusion. But, what does this look like in practice? How can organisations contribute to cultivating a more inclusive industry?
Nathan Spencer is Director at UKREiiF, and he joins RICS’ Sybil Taunton to discuss strategies for leading the industry towards a more inclusive environment, and the long-standing importance of social value as awareness grows around matters of diversity, equity and inclusion.
This episode of The RICS Podcast covers:
UK REiiF
https://www.ukreiif.com/
Opportunities for equity: effective organisations with RICS Sybil Taunton & UKREiiF’s Nathan Spencer #113
Mon, Jan 22 2024
Sybil Taunton, Nathan Spencer
Welcome to the RICS podcast bringing you insight and opinions on the built environment from around the world. I'm Sybil Taunton, Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the RICS. I'm joined by Nathan Spencer, Director at UKREiiF, the UK's real estate investment and infrastructure forum. Today we're discussing opportunities for equity and effective practice and what it looks like, but most importantly, how organisations in the built environment can develop and implement it. Before we get too deep into the conversation, I want to start on the more terminology level. And if we could just talk about what equity means, we hear it mentioned a lot as part of the DEI or EDI acronyms. We hear equality, or we hear equity. But what does equity mean to you?
Nathan Spencer 00:58
Yes, I suppose after deciding internally, we tried to make sure it's just a simple term. So it's about making sure that we're treating everybody fairly, helping to remove barriers and resources - giving them resources. Making sure that we level out that playing field effectively is what we're trying to do. But specifically, it's about honing down and identifying and then eliminating the barriers that we have identified. And I suppose ensuring the processes or structure is put in place, particularly as an event organiser of how we can actually play a part in that with a wider industry is where there's a lot of issues, so trying to see what platform we can offer to to enable a bit more of a fairer industry.
Okay, great. Thank you. Do you think from your perspective, in the work that you've been trying to get after in this space? Do you think there's a common understanding of consensus throughout the industry, whether it's within the UK or globally, on what equity means? And how do you think that impacts your efforts to try and drive change in the space?
I think there is, to a degree. I think the word equity and in some global markets, actually, it still relates to a financial sense, and it's not being picked up. And, some people are looking at things like diversity, and trying to be more inclusive. But actually, sometimes you have to go beyond just trying to make sure that a room is diverse, or trying to make sure that there's an inclusive strategy in place. So yeah, I think DEI exists globally. But speaking to some, in other countries, the word equity is used in a financial sense. I think the notion translates internationally, that we want to be creating fairer and impartial communities and workplaces. But sometimes it's looked at from an optics view, rather than going a bit further and making sure that there is a structural process in place to actually make that change.
Absolutely. I agree with you. And I think, you know, what's really important here is RICS as a global organisation, and this is something that we're up against, on a regular basis, but it's looking at at those viewpoints those perspectives, you know, some places things like affirmative action, positive action or positive discrimination, how have you word it are legal there are mechanisms that can be used to drive and push some of those necessary changes. And I think, you know, speaking with our UK, stakeholders, and those, you know, participating in UKREiiF, we look at the UK equalities, act and sections 158 and 159, lay it out for businesses, how these positive actions are both legal and encouraged within the right frameworks and looking at removing those barriers that you're talking about. And that it is an acceptable practice, and it is something that businesses should be looking at, and yet we're seeing resistance to that throughout the industry in some areas. That's where I think it's great that that organisations like UK reef and leaders like you are, are really pushing, pushing the narrative on that. And so, you know, not just UKREiiF, other organisations are striving to make, you know, a more fair, inclusive built environment. What is your organisation doing, if you could talk us through some of the things that you're doing to try and try and push some of these narratives some of these changes?
Yeah, so as an event organiser, I think, historically, event organisers have thought, they're just sort of putting on a show of the industry and the industry, if it isn't diverse and inclusive, then obviously, the show or the event or the forum isn't going to be either. So, we've tried to really push this. So, we are discussing the future of cities, the future of communities. We need to have a true representation of society when we're talking about those things, rather than it being the industry. So, we've put in place a lot of things that we can do - so we have a diversity charter in place, which has enabled us to have more or less a 50/50 breakdown of speakers at UKREiiF the event for male and female representation. We had 14.5% of our speakers who are black, asian or from other minority ethnicities and we're looking at at the breakdown of those underneath it, and they're well ahead of industry sort of standards, particularly when we're looking at the level that we're looking at from the sponsor perspective and the speaker perspective, it seems to be MDs, C-suite, CEOs, etc. But outside of that, we're looking to ensure that the audience is much more diverse. And that comes with having a diverse sort of set of speakers because if you see yourself on stage, and your community is represented, you know, you feel like it's a place that you belong, that you can come to. But outside of that, we've partnered with about 60 organisations, so from Muslims in Rail, Black Professionals in Construction, Freehold LGBT, The Junior Lawyers Division, every area that we think is underrepresented in the industry, or would have difficulty paying to come to UKREiiF, we make sure that we partner with the groups that are leading within their fields. And we offered last year about 600,000 pounds of benefits in kind to those organisations, and we'll continue to increase that. Naturally, as our attendance increases, we're having to do a lot more voluntary work to partner with more groups to make sure that we are bringing through more and more diverse individuals, every time. So there's lots we can do, there's lots other people can do. And I think a lot of the time, it feels like people use the excuses of the industry as the biggest challenge. And you have to put in some fundamental changes yourself to make sure that you are having a positive a positive change. So apart from adding in around, you know how we do from a speaker perspective and an audience perspective, we're trying now to actually have a real impact within the industry, we've got the right people there. We're making sure that we're harnessing change whilst we're there. One of them we can't talk too much about, it's quite a large fundamental change to the industry, which will be announced in the next few few weeks. But that will be a truly transformational announcement for the industry, but some of them that we can talk about - an example would be, we're working with black professionals in construction, and the BAME Planners Network, to try to get more ethnically diverse owned businesses onto frameworks within the procurement route. So instead of us talking about it on a panel, we're putting people together for two hours, the people who are who are making those decisions around bidding procurement, the framework providers, putting them in a room with people who are really promoting and challenging them to do it. So that's where we see our role now is beyond just being a talking slot, which many events can move into, we're trying to make sure that we're actually harnessing change properly, because we have the right people there, let's make sure there's action, rather than it being just talking about what the issues are.
That's brilliant, Nathan, and I mean, everything you've just said there, and some of your posts that you've done you know, on LinkedIn calling these things out, setting those expectations for this is; this is what it takes, and what we expect of organisations getting involved in UKREiiF, you know, this year, and in the future, what's refreshing to me is that you are the director of the organisation, you are the the senior leader, and you're so invested in this and you're leading it from the front and you own it. You know the data, you know the gaps, and you're, you're leading that change from the top from the front, and I think that's fantastic. And it's what we need to see a lot more from within the industry, not having the practitioners like myself and others, you know, having to be the voice of all of it, our senior leaders should be out there owning these things and knowing the programmes and driving that change. So I mean, that's my perspective coming as a practitioner, how do you view your role as an individual and more importantly, as a leader within the industry?
Yeah, I suppose that's a really good way of summing it up. So we go to a lot of events, and I go to DEI talks quite frequently. And a lot of the time, it's the same people in the room. So you're preaching your messages to the same people. And there's loads of allies out there, there's loads of people who will put their hands up and say, Yeah, I really, really want the industry to be more diverse, more inclusive, to be more equal, but actually, they just sit back and let other people do it. And it really, really needs super allies to come up and stand forward and go, do you know what? It's going to be me that started saying it rather than the company message, because the company is slightly restricted with branding, it's slightly restricted with what it can say on on company channels, the individuals behind it, they can do what they want on their channels. And so to me, it should be them pushing out a lot more. So anyone listening who is an ally, make sure you start talking about it. You know, we try to put our money where our mouth is. So you know, if we do articles in publications, this is a message that we put forward. See, I think from an individual perspective, and it's not just me, there's other people within the industry and within our business as well. We're dialling the same, the same message out there. But yeah, it does need you've got more reach people buy from people and it's the same with messages. So if you're talking to people as an individual, your reach goes much further and it can have much more impact. It might make someone else post about it, it might make someone else posts about it. And it continues to have a trend change, rather than just letting the people who were already doing it, try to do their best.
Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned there, that some other organisations are doing great things in this space. Are you happy to share maybe some examples of organisations or people or leaders that you think are, you know, heading in the right direction having a positive impact along with you?
Yeah, so I suppose one that stands out to me is Sam McClary at Estates Gazette. I think it Estates Gazette do an absolutely fantastic job in terms of trying to make sure that their messaging is always on point. They do invest into young professionals, and next gen, they do invest into the industry groups that are doing positive change. To them, to me are a leader, and they've got a huge voice through their publication, and to be - instead of focusing solely on sort of more technical areas of the industry - to be focusing on that, I think is just a brilliant thing that they're championing. A lot of the stuff that we see being done is probably more from the industry group. So, Women in Architecture who are fantastic group that we partner with for UKREiiF, came back to us following UKREiiF to say, yeah, it was great. But also we've got some really good ideas to how to improve it, and effectively holding us accountable to say you've done great, but you can do more. So, organisations like Women in Architecture have been fantastic in terms of enabling us to go to go that level further. But we find it all the time with with companies like JLL, like Atkins Realis, who we work with at UKREiiF. They came on board early as partners in our first year, when it was just a pipe dream and us saying that, yes, social value and D and I would be important to us and it's going to be embedded in, and they've bought behind that. And they're bringing their next gen to the events, they're bringing a diverse group of, of individuals to the event, we set sort of criteria around diversity with attendees. So, if people buy 10 tickets, at least three of them have to be non-male. And we do different sorts of criteria as well within there. But the likes of JLL, the likes of Atkins Realis, the likes of Rider Levett Bucknall, they go beyond that. And they are really championing and coming to us with ideas of how to get people involved. So yeah, there's loads doing it, it's just sort of looking on LinkedIn is where it is where I start and and see some of these new ideas coming through what people are doing, there's a lot doing it, they just need their voice amplified by some of the more senior people within those businesses, rather than it being sort of a level, a level under where the reach maybe isn't going as far.
Brilliant. Thank you. So in terms of getting back to the work that you're doing within UKREiiF, how have you and the team identified the gaps and the pain points and barriers, and how has that driven your strategy development, and how you decide the mechanisms and the ways in which you're going to address them?
Quite simply, we started with an external consultant. So we use Constricting Rainbows, which is owned by Sharon Slinger who's been fantastic in coming into the business and looking at how we can use the platform, I suppose that was an eye opener - we didn't really realise that our events were a platform for change. We were looking at it internally of what we could change at the first point. And now we do an annual questionnaire review internally, as well as gaining a lot more feedback throughout the year. For us, we've got so many different contacts and people coming to the events that that is our feedback space. And that is what helps us to identify and address issues. So, we get feedback from delegates, we get feedback from specific industry organisations like the Women in Architecture I mentioned earlier. And I suppose, the key thing that we want to do is, we're there to facilitate change. So we try to understand that big issue that people are struggling with. So as I mentioned earlier with with Black Professionals in Construction and BAME Planners network trying to get more ethnically diverse owned businesses on to frameworks, that that's something which is easy for us to get the people around the room and do so it's trying to understand actually not just what's some of the big issues and looking at our data and go Well, that looks like a pain point. And that looks like pain point. Going down and deep diving with those groups to understand what their issues are, and what challenges they've got what could make a transformational change in their industry, and then bringing them into what we're doing as a as an event organiser.
Okay, brilliant. Thank you. So you mentioned that a lot of organisations who are, you know, have been early adopters who you've seen a lot of, you know, great action in progress from. What about the organisations that are that are just getting started in this journey and trying to be, you know, more inclusive and equitable in their practices. What, what advice do you have for those organisations, especially those that are wanting To get involved, you know, with UKREiiF or even meet those, those expectations and standards that you're setting for them, what advice do you have for them?
Yeah, I mean, everyone's got to start somewhere differently. And, and that's where we were four or five years ago, of bringing an external consultant just to help us understand where we were at as a business, and give some ideas of best practice or strategic things that we can put in place.
Great, thank you. This has been fantastic. Nathan, I think UKREiiF is the organisation that is bringing together organisations and like you said, RICS, we just had a forum with a bunch of networks. And if there are ones that you know, that that you aren't connected with Nathan, I'm very happy to, to bring them to your inbox. Whether it's you know, Black women in Real Estate or Association of Muslim surveyors, Sikh surveyors network, we've got some great ones if you aren't connected with them already. I'm happy to but yeah.
Yeah, our biggest issue is that the as the attendance grows to sort of 10 or 12,000, of trying to make sure that we're inviting enough people from other sort of ethnically diverse backgrounds, to try and get through the door, through free tickets and partnerships, we need that to increase by another 1000 just to mitigate the sort of increase organically of attendees. So, it's been a bit of a challenge this year, we've only we've only partnered with another sort of 15 or 20, which sounds great, but we're looking at going, Yeah, we need many, many more, particularly for 25 and onwards. So any list you've got, and I'll cross check and let you know which ones we don't know if you can intro to that'd be amazing.
Yeah, absolutely, I'll do that for you. There's also a platform, it's for throughout all over Europe, but they've created a speaker's platform where people can register as real estate industry speakers from diverse backgrounds and stuff like that. And so if you're not connected with that team as well, I'll dig that up. Because that's a really good one where you can just easily find where all the people are that are registered to be speakers within within real estate.
Is that Diversity Talks Real Estate? Yes, diversity talks of real estate! There it is. Yeah, we do now again use that one - our biggest benefit has been the, by having the diversity sort of set to say, actually, we're going to do diverse panels. It got mentioned on a on an event I was at yesterday, where we go out for nominations. So we need about 700 speakers over the course of the week. And in November, we have 1600 nominations of speakers wanting to speak. And the marketing teams have always found it difficult to go to their teams and go, right who's speaking and it'll always be the sort of male CEO who goes oh me, put me down for those. And because we've gone to them with this clear direction to say we're actually wanting diverse speakers, and you'll have more chance of speaking, if you put them forward. It's allowed the marketing team to go to seniors and go actually, no, you need to give us a diverse group, otherwise, you won't be able to speak as a business. So yeah, that that in itself has been brilliant for us, because it just means that we just had a wave of diversity come through, which we probably should connect with, with Diversity Talks Real Estate to get them onto their platform as well, at some point.
Absolutely. That ties back to that allyship question, because that's a big one that we come across and we've had the same conversation within RICS as well, when we're when we're curating our events and talking with our events team, is when we talk about ally ship, and even one, simple step a senior leader can take as an ally is when asked to speak at an event is rather than accepting for themselves go right, who else within my organisation is an expert and could be platformed and could have their voice out there other than me. You know, that's that's one step and that's something that doesn't take a degree in inclusion to understand it's that's that's a way that leaders can be allies and are you seeing more behaviours like that as you're developing, you know, the UKREiiF agenda and and plans. Do you see organisations taking that step and being accepting Are you still seeing a lot of the same senior leaders filling those speaking roles?
From our side, we're still seeing a lot of people wanting their sons really senior team to speak, which tends to be male CEO, C-suite professionals. We are seeing certain organisations which are being a bit more specific on it because they know us now. So knowing what UKREiiF is all about, and the culture that we're trying to bring forward, there are companies which are being a bit more, sort of aware, of who they're putting forward. But it comes back to what we do as an event organiser; we specify that very clearly, when we're going out looking for speakers, we work with all the big PR comms agencies who have a list of clients. And again, we send the same message to them - make sure that you're sending a diverse group of potential speakers to us. We will review that and you will be more likely, in fairness to be speaking, if you put forward diverse speakers, I would say that there's probably not enough of, if we go to a senior representative of people coming back to his going no, well, what about my colleague? They'd be great. So I think 100% there should be more promotion internally of other people within their teams, we have to do a lot of the pushing. There's not many companies that do the pushing back and say, no, why have you come to me? Or could we put forward another senior representative, we actually see the opposite. We still see people, if we've invited somebody, like a female speaker, who is maybe secondary, from a, an authority perspective, we still see the CEO or the chief executive or the leader of a council coming in and say, no, I want to speak instead, that should be me. So actually, we probably see more of the opposite. We still see senior leaders wanting to out whoever we've invited, who is a diverse or, or whatnot. So yeah, a lot more to do I think on that one. Absolutely.
And that gets to the heart of what we mean by allyship, and what active allyship actually looks like in practice. And that's, that's one of the things I think, you know, should be a focus area. And I think, you know, it'd be an interesting, I think it'd be a telling exercise for CEOs and C-suites across organisations is how many layers down within our leadership structure do we have to go to find expertise, but also representation, you know, diverse representation? And I think that that in and of itself would be a really, really telling exercise for a lot of organisations. But yeah, well, you mentioned MIPIM, and I think that's the contrast between UKREiiF and MIPIM. Is, is interesting, but I just got connected with an early career professional, there's 16 of them who have come together as the MIPIM Challengers -
The Challengers, is actually they've invited 16 young people to the event to talk about a certain subject. So they had like 200 people send in how they would change the industry, and 16 of them have been selected to talk at MIPIM, and they're going to pay for them to attend. That's a key bit of events. And if we didn't do what we did, actually, we'd probably lose a lot commercially. There's so much commercial benefit in focusing on trying to be more inclusive, because if you don't, you're just alienating 40 or 50% of the industry, it's a weird thing for event organisations to do. We even go as far as if people put out a post with four men on an infographic saying we're at UKREiiF, we email them and tell them to take it off. So we don't want that culture of because it just doesn't look, would you go there? Well no, I wouldn't. So we've had a lot of angry people come back to us on that, in particular, of saying, well, you're just being x, y, z. So that's the biggest one. That's been a challenge for us in telling people to take off their stuff. Yeah. Thanks for promoting us, but - can you not is a weird request!
Yeah. I mean, I think yeah, I think it's great. Yeah - cuz it's a hard move. And it's an uncomfortable move. But it's an important one, because that's the only way you get that impactful change is, is actually having those uncomfortable conversations.
Yeah, exactly. Which I didn't know at the beginning. Sharon made me aware that I'm allowed to have those difficult conversations because we were very nervous about it. And we were like, No, we can't do that. We can't tell people but you know, you can actually you're in the right so yeah, it harnesses quite a good depth. Really internally, when you're the ones leading on it.
I think that's great. And I think that gets to another key part of this is ultimately what wins out, like your moral compass in terms of doing what's right for the culture that you want to create and the ultimate brand representation that you want to have, or the bottom line and the profits that come from that. Because, you know, you're, you're showing that UKREiiF is willing to lose clients - willing to lose potential paychecks in - that support the organisation if those organisations are not meeting the standards that you've set for them. And not a lot of businesses are willing to impact the bottom line in that way to do the right thing at the moment. And I think that's going to continue to be an uphill slog within looking at pushing, you know, inclusion and equity within the industry. But I think it's fantastic, and I and I celebrate the work that that you and the team are doing and your willingness to like not just have the uncomfortable conversations, but hold strong to your values, and the boundaries that you you know - not boundaries, the expectations that you've set - and no voice is going to make you waver on that on those values. I think that's brilliant, and I applaud you on that.
I think fundamentally, if you don't have a big focus on DEI and social value and sort of doing the right thing, you won't be around in 10 years as a business. Yeah, there might be short wins that they can have as a business relying on where they've been historically. But, unless you start making that shift now and championing this, and embedding into culture, you won't be here in 10 years time. So we've seen more benefit from the commercial side of focusing on DEI and social value. So yes, we might lose a couple of clients here and there who don't believe in it. But from our end, it doesn't really matter, because we're working with clients who, who have got this really embedded into their sort of agenda into their business culture, you know, your JLL, your Atkins, your Pagabo who've been on board since the beginning - Moda, Caddick - those organisations who care about it came on board, because that was part of our journey. That was part of their voice, you know, we're giving them a platform to yes, talk about the industry, but to also talk about what they're doing within the realms of social value, DEI, inclusivity. So, yeah, from our end, if you're not doing it, it will be a struggle for you commercially in the coming years. Because when you're going out to tender bid, when people are looking at businesses that they respect and want to be working for, whatever it might be, whether it be looking to employ people, whether it be looking for work, you're going to struggle, if you don't have an inclusive culture within your business. See, you need to move now otherwise, you won't be here.
Great, thank you. This has been fantastic. Nathan, I think you've shined a spotlight on some of the key areas, and you've, you've showcased that, like it's not that difficult. You know, I think it gets big and scary when organisations are thinking about their DEI programmes and strategies. And some things are incredibly difficult, and they require rolling up the sleeves and really getting after some hard hitting issues and key barriers that take some time to remove. But you're showcasing that there's also a lot of things you can do that, that aren't hard. It's just about shifting your mindset and the culture that you're trying to create. And then putting action behind the words and doing the work to reinforce you know, that culture and, and aspirations of what you want the industry to look like. So, thank you for sharing your experiences and your perspectives on this conversation. Was there anything else you wanted to, to address in this? Or, you know, maybe I didn't ask a question that set you up to deliver a message that you were hoping to,
I don't know the not really the only message from my side is just be a super are like, you know, stop sitting on a fan's stop waiting for other people to be an ally within the industry. Just make sure you go out there and it's harvest that culture within your team, have a subculture within the industry and within your business. The more that you can do the more that others will do. See out the main message just do a little bit more if you're not already doing enough.
Well, thank you for listening to the RICS podcast. How should we develop this conversation further? Let us know your thoughts on social media, or directly via the form on the rics.org podcast page. Follow us on your podcast app, or check our page on rics.org to stay up to date with all the latest episodes from RICS.