Beca becomes migrants' employer of choice

Beca Transportation won a Diversity Award at the EEO Trust Work & Life Awards this year as a result of its initiatives to attract traffic engineers from around the world.

 EEO Trust Chief Executive Philippa Reed says that a range of diversity initiatives introduced by Beca Transportation have proven that cultural diversity is both a competitive advantage in professional consulting services and a sustainable way to grow and develop a company.

"Beca Transportation has developed an extremely effective set of initiatives to ensure it recruits and retains the very best traffic engineers from around the world," she says. "Traffic engineers are thin on the ground in New Zealand and overseas so Beca Transportation set out to create a workplace of choice for immigrating traffic engineers. This involved listening to what they needed, assessing whether the current workplace culture was inhospitable in any way and proactively targeting graduates.

"It's about two-way communication, not just focusing on the challenges of people coming into New Zealand but also looking at helping managers understand that they might need to do things differently."

One of the key issues limiting immigrant employees' ability to perform was poor written English. In one initiative, an English tutor was employed to help new employees, typically from Asian countries, improve their English language skills. A new recruit from Myanmar is currently receiving one-on-one training and the company pays for an English conversation group which runs after work once a week.

Technical Director and Section Manager of the Transportation Group Matt Ensor wanted to encourage the organisation to learn from people new to New Zealand. "While a friendly team is important, we discovered this alone may not be enough," he says. "We noticed that some new staff were not taking part in the team's social activities, even though they were invited personally and everything was paid for by the company."

A study found that some of the Kiwi ways of doing things were not appealing to immigrants. For example, social gatherings typically involved alcohol and Kiwi banter. "People unfamiliar with this type of gathering weren't quite sure how to take it," says Matt Ensor.

As a result, soft drinks became more visible in the fridge and some simple changes were made the social environment to make it more welcoming and accessible for new staff. Similarly, some team lunches and celebrations moved from local pubs to yum cha restaurants as Matt Ensor redefined ways to celebrate as a team.

Philippa Reed says the results of these initiatives speak for themselves. In 2002, the Transportation Group had one female and one Asian engineer. Now, the majority of the section was born overseas (26 staff from 13 countries) and women make up about 40% of the team.  

In a recruitment market where engineering skills are in exceptionally high demand worldwide, the Transportation Group has grown by 11 staff (30%) in the past year whereas similar organisations have been losing staff.

The success of the Transportation Group's approach to diversity has led to the group mentoring other Beca section managers to support new immigrants. Matt Ensor says this will benefit the whole of Beca Infrastructure, both in terms of recruitment and retention, and also in building understanding of the international markets it operates in.