Morson’s commitment to diversity and inclusion was highly commended as we took home the award for Best Diversity and Inclusion Strategy at the FIRM Awards 2020.

The annual FIRM Awards celebrate the very best of in-house recruitment excellence, innovation and best practice.

Morson was shortlisted amongst Primark Limited, SAP and Transport for London. Originally scheduled to take place in London in March, the awards were eventually presented on the 4^th November in a ceremony that took place online due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Morson’s ED&I strategy has expanded in recent years. The inspiration for this came from a review of the company’s staff and placed contractor population highlighted a lack of gender diversity. This was particularly evident in technical contract roles – 6.5% female from our c.12,000 contractors at the time – and our own future leader pipeline. Within Morson International, women occupied just 14.6% of the highest paid jobs, whilst occupying 38.2% of the lowest.
While this could be justified by the male-dominated sectors within which we operate, and their subsequent shortage of skills, with stats from EngineeringUK showing clear gender disparity in engineering: while women comprised 47.1% of the overall UK workforce in 2018, only 12% of engineering occupations were filled by women. This insight presented a multi-faceted business case to address the lack of female representation.

Our diversity strategy has sponsorship from executive board level (chief operating officer, Adrian Adair) and volunteer ambassadors from across the business have regular strategy meetings, as well engaging with key stakeholders from our clients’ organisations.

Our strategy focuses on two key goals that would deliver an internal cultural change to combat negative, harmful gender stereotypes. Through a shift in our organisational practice, culture and viewpoint, we have been able to make headway in transforming our own talent pipeline and that of our clients. Beyond this culture change, our strategy focuses on expanding the talent pool by attracting more females into traditionally male-dominated industries and addressing sector-specific skills gaps. Through diversification we benefit from enhanced creativity of thought, agility and the ability to combat unconscious bias surrounding engineering and its perceived ‘macho’ culture. This demonstrably increases innovation, improves team work and fosters improved employee and candidate relationships.

Sam Price, Head of Client Engagement at Morson and our ED&I lead, said:

“The FIRM awards focus on excellence, innovation and best practice so it’s a tremendous achievement for every member of the Morson family that we’ve been recognised for our ED&I strategy.  

As a collective, the Morson Group has worked hard to design and deliver an ED&I strategy that drives positive change internally and externally. With recruitment at the core of everything we do it’s our continued ambition that we pay it forward to our clients and the industries, we service in driving the agenda for diverse and inclusive colleague communities. There definitely is no finish line for our strategy and we are committed to continuing to improving and reinforcing our people-first culture across the Group.”