Our People
Objective
Be an employer of choice
Goals
Build an inclusive and diverse workforce
Champion social mobility through structured work and graduate and apprenticeship opportunities
Upskill all employees to provide opportunity and meet future business needs
“We’re delighted to become a Gold member of the 5% Club as it supports our commitment to attracting more young people to the construction industry. Our apprenticeship and graduate programmes are growing in strength year on year and, in 2022, we welcomed our largest apprentice and graduate cohort to date which is something we are hugely proud of.”
Graeme Boylen, HR director, Europe West
Our objective is to be an employer of choice and an organisation with a truly inclusive culture. Our employees underpin the long-term success of our business and our customers, so it is vital that we continue to build an inclusive business that attracts and retains a talented, motivated and diverse workforce.
Highlights
Fostering inclusion and diversity
Tarmac is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse working environment where our employees are proud to be themselves. Our people are our priority, and we value difference and actively seek to benefit from a variety of skills, knowledge, and experiences. We acknowledge our people have different requirements as individuals and we seek to support everyone wherever possible.
In 2022, we teamed up with Scope to promote careers in construction to people who are neurodiverse or have a visible or non-visible physical disability. The partnership forms part of our overarching inclusion and diversity commitments. So far, Scope has advertised 15 opportunities for jobs at Tarmac to give more people with disabilities the chance to use their talent in the construction industry.
Inclusion and diversity training
An important part of our current Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) strategy is to increase the diversity of those who choose to work with us, and to foster a fair and supportive culture for all. Our end goal is to be an inclusive employer of choice. To support these aims, the training module ‘Leading Inclusion & Diversity’ was created and delivered to business leaders in Tarmac and its subsidiaries. This training was the largest roll out of face-to-face education since the Covid-19 pandemic and reached over 500 people in 2022 alone. The course covers the fundamental concepts of inclusion, belonging, and respect, and emphasises their importance to the long-term success of our business. It also covers topics such as diversity, unconscious bias, and how to ensure an open and honest work environment where everyone can feel comfortable being themselves. A version of this training is due to be rolled out to all areas of the business by local HR teams in 2023.
To compliment the leadership face-to-face training, we created a new online training program focused on the basic elements of inclusion and diversity, which we made available to all colleagues in September. This training module proved to be the most popular e-learning course of the year, with 4,364 colleagues successfully completing it. The online training will act as a sample of the further I&D training to come in 2023, and start crucial conversations around inclusion and diversity.
Inclusive Policies
We have continued to review and update our policies through an inclusive lens, and during 2022 we updated our paternity policy, and launched a new menopause policy.
Listening to our employees and acting on the feedback we receive is critical to making Tarmac a great place to work, where all feel included. Last year during a round table conversation between Peter Buckley, President, Tarmac, and our employee community chairs, the paternity policy was raised by our parents and carers community chair. Since then, we have reviewed and updated this policy to ensure we are continuing to support our people.
Through feedback from our menopause support group and female voice community we also launched our new menopause policy. The purpose of this policy is to raise awareness of the menopause and communicate Tarmac’s support to our employees who experience menopausal symptoms that may impact their lives at home and at work.
Clear Assured
Following on from achieving a silver Clear Assured accreditation last year, we have now reached gold status, for our work throughout 2022 and into the start of 2023. Clear Assured is an independent inclusion and diversity assessment company providing accreditation and support to companies. Our gold status reflects our continued efforts and progress since achieving the silver award in January 2022. It also serves as a testament to our commitment to building a truly inclusive environment through both policies and actions.
Employee communities
In 2021 we launched our employee communities as a way for employees to connect and provide support in the topics that matter to them. Forums to share experiences and knowledge with fellow workmates, our communities are sponsored by a senior leader and led by employee chairs with a vested interest. Throughout 2022, our communities have continued to grow and three more were established. The communities we currently have available for our employees to join are:
- Female voice
- Menopause support (closed group for employees going through the menopause)
- Mental health and wellbeing
- LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer +)
- REACH (religion, ethnic and cultural heritage)
- Parents and carers
- Ability (physical and non-physical disabilities including neurodiversity)
- Inclusion and diversity champions
- Sustainability
- Go digital (set up in 2022)
- Early careers (set up in 2022)
- Ex-armed forces and emergency services (set up in 2022)
We’re proud to celebrate what matters to our colleagues and help everyone feel comfortable to bring their whole self to work by creating an inclusive workplace. Our employee communities are there for our colleagues to find like-minded people to share advice and knowledge, provide support or simply connect with others. Our communities now have over 1,800 members. In 2022, the online community group pages were visited 10,825 times.
Gender pay report
At Tarmac, we celebrate and encourage diversity, we want everyone who works with us to experience this sense of belonging, while always feeling able to be themselves. We’re committed to nurturing a culture which embraces difference. We do, however, acknowledge that construction remains a primarily male dominated industry. For the future of our industry, there is a need and desire to accelerate change that is more reflective of society.
In addition to discussing our gender pay differences in more detail, our annual gender pay gap report also highlights what actions we are taking to close the pay gap and to ensure Tarmac is an inclusive place where people love to work.
< 19
0.8
20 - 24
4.9
25 - 29
9.1
30 - 39
22.2
40 - 49
21.5
50 - 59
28.1
60 +
13.2
Early careers
Following on from our ‘so much more’ recruitment campaign at the end of 2021, Tarmac welcomed 126 apprentices, higher apprentices and graduates into the business in 2022. This was our largest intake yet. This includes roles across the business and across the country as we strive to upskill and grow talent in the construction sector. Following successful completion of their programmes, it is hoped that the experience and expertise gained will enable the apprentices and graduates to build their careers, within or outside Tarmac.
Colleague mentoring
In 2022, we launched a new mentoring programme to develop and connect our colleagues to share knowledge, experience, advice and support. The purpose is to develop the potential of the mentee and the skillset of the mentor. We felt this programme would fit perfectly with our new early careers intake. We matched up 65 early careers mentees with 65 employees from across the business. Individuals who were part of our early careers intake at the end of 2022 started their two-year mentoring programme from the time they joined Tarmac.
The 5% Club
Tarmac is proud to be awarded Gold accredited membership via the 5% Club’s 2022-23 Employer Audit Scheme. The 5% Club is committed to ensuring that in the next five years, 5% of its members in the UK workforce are young people on training schemes. The award recognises our significant contribution to the continued development of all our employees through “earn and learn” schemes such as apprenticeships, graduate schemes and sponsored student course placements.
Social mobility
Tarmac was a winner at the first ever Purpose Business Coalition ‘Levelling Up’ awards, in recognition of our achievements in helping to improve social mobility across the UK. We triumphed in the ‘Infrastructure for Opportunity’ category, acknowledging the impact that our work has had on delivering opportunity.
Upskilling our colleagues
It is important we continue to invest in developing and training our employees, no matter where they are at in their career, to ensure we attract and retain the best in our industry. We want to upskill all employees to widen their personal opportunities and also meet our future business needs.
In 2022 Tarmac had its first Ofsted visit as an Employer Provider. Ofsted reviewed our operative apprenticeship programme, the Professional Operator Development Programme (PODP). We attained one ‘significant’ and two ‘reasonable’ progress ratings over the assessment areas.
PODP is designed around the mineral processing mobile and static plant operator apprenticeship qualification, delivered through a series of workshops, e-learning modules and practical on-the-job training.
Supporting those in their first industry roles, as well as colleagues keen to develop new skills to progress in their careers, the programme covers a range of topics designed to enhance professional understanding of the industry, equipment and safety. This includes risk assessments and the correct maintenance of plant equipment. In September 2022, we started offering two more apprenticeships under our PODP; road surface operative and mineral and construction product sampling and testing operations.
Tarmac employees across the business completed over 397,000 guided learning hours in 2022. This includes e-learning modules and in-person training, from health and safety to our new inclusion and diversity training.
Sustainability upskilling
Through a range of initiatives and projects, our Sustainability team has been driving forward with our goal of reaching net zero before 2050 and achieving wider sustainability goals. This includes upskilling colleagues across the business about sustainability. The launch of our Sustainability strategy, action plans, sustainability training, and a dedicated toolkit have all been part of our efforts in 2022 to achieve our sustainability goals.
Looking forward
Our people are and will continue to be our priority to ensure the long-term success of our business. Throughout 2023 we will continue developing new I&D policies and ensure all staff have completed our inclusion and belonging e-learning. We will continue to provide and encourage training opportunities for all employees and hope to launch a sustainability focused e-learning module. We are excited to see how our largest ever early careers intake progress as they work through their first year of our core skills development programme and are looking forward to welcoming a new cohort in September and watching the early careers community grow.
