Diversity/Equity/Inclusion

Deborah Cole on Diversifying the Workforce

As more companies look for ways to expand their workforce, questions are asked about how to accomplish it. In recent months, I’ve been asked about the following things specifically: 

I feel like I’ve tapped all of my resources to find people to work for me. How can I expand this?  

On a recent RFP I received, I’ve been asked to identify the diversity in my staff and what program I include to train my staff on diversity, equity and inclusion. What do I do?  

How can I attract more women to my staff? 

My staff all look just like me. I know that can’t be the right thing in today’s world. How can I change?”  

It is true that finding an available workforce is difficult. Many green industry companies are perplexed about where to seek out new sources of staff. It is also true that over 90 percent of the staffing in the landscape industry is male. Since over 50 percent of the U.S. population is female, there is an untapped resource. Does it not seem like one statement gives rise to a solution for the other?  

Universities with programs in horticulture are filled with women seeking meaningful and equitable employment. Do we mine these programs for future employees? Do we ask our current employees if they can refer female family or friends to our companies to fill empty roles? Often old assumptions about who should and can fill a role are outdated. Expanding our search is one possible step.

In the consideration of making our workforce more diverse, we must ask if our work environment allows for women who have large family responsibilities to work. Not only are green industry job descriptions, hours and requirements all based on old standards, but these are often prohibitive if we want to add a diverse group of workers to our companies. 

Recent studies and reports indicate that women in the workforce yield elevated results.  Profitability, employee engagement and innovation all are shown to increase when women are added to staff. As the saying goes, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Hiring the same, promoting the same and training the same do not yield the improved results that we desire.

Yes, the landscape industry is indeed labor intensive, but we cannot continue to assume that production teams should only consist of men. Women have been shown to produce faster results and higher quality results in those areas where efficiency and a high level of detail are required.  

It is often said that we continue to do things the way we always have out of fear of change. But what we are asking for is change and improvement in our staffing. Diversity, equity and inclusion does not just mean hiring a token female or person of color. It requires a commitment to making the change and making internal changes in regard to training all others that will make such a change a success. People who are hired want to fit in. Conversely, many of our existing teams want leadership to continue to hire people just like them. That is what is  comfortable.  Making a bold decision to hire differently requires effort and commitment—but the statistics show us it’s worth it.

ABOUT

Deborah Cole is the founder of a commercial landscape firm with multiple locations throughout Texas.  She now devotes herself full-time to speaking, writing and consulting.  
deborahcoleconnections.com