Globally, Arup is maintaining 40% representation of women. In Australia, we have 41%, and 47% in New Zealand.   

It takes very deliberate action by our senior staff regarding how we hire, develop, reward and fairly promote to hold the next layer of managers to the same standard in building this way of thinking in the leadership. It’s about having a deep understanding of the barriers that women and minority groups face in our industry and implementing ways to overcome them.

We have procedures in place, such as putting a gender lens over our promotions, and, importantly, we have policies and practices to support women to thrive at Arup. For example, flexible working, shared care parental support, and domestic and family violence support. We also have inclusive leadership development for all our leaders.

It’s critical to maintain the commitment to diverse hires and promotions, and to continue to ensure that women, particularly the leadership pipeline, have a very clear robust development plan behind them.

Do these policies and procedures help Arup retain women and encourage them into leadership roles?

Maintaining our female spread is one thing, but, regarding leadership specificity, on 1 April 2025 our firm-wide commitments were replaced with a global Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy that turned the commitment’s intent into action (see https://www.arup.com/about-us/corporate-reports/equity-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy/). 40:40:20 remains a gender balance goal overall, even at leadership levels. It provides a destination to work towards overtly and holds us accountable.

How does this goal translate in Arup’s leadership grades?

In Australia, Arup has 31% women in leadership, and 35% in New Zealand. We must keep that pipeline growing and make sure we’re moving into 40:40:20 for all grades of the organisation from leadership levels to more junior levels so there’s more work to be done.

I think it’s important to educate the whole – make it very clear to everyone why we’re doing this, its importance, and how to have inclusive leadership. Our global EDI strategy talks about belonging, which means different things to different people. It articulates belonging as Arup being a place where people feel at home, respected, and confident to challenge ideas and participate to do their best work, and sets out the steps required to achieve this.

How do you define success for your people with reference to Arup’s EDI strategy?

The business is built on very strong values. There are a couple of aspects to success.

One of the things Arup did to foster a sense of belonging was to create the ‘Connect Gender Equity Group’, an employee resource group set up following our Diversity Survey 2023, in which women recorded low scores around believing they had less than equal access to opportunities than men to succeed.

In response, we did a deep dive with the women in this resource group regarding their motivators to leave or stay at Arup. We asked them how we solve this problem of believing there is equal access to opportunities for women, and how we can make them feel more empowered and that they can succeed.

Two key things emerged. The first was that women sometimes experience inappropriate or disrespectful behaviour on construction sites. The second was having access to key projects for their career development as they felt they weren’t getting the opportunities at decision points, such as when all charts were being collated for big projects. These two specific things made women feel that they weren’t able to be as successful as men.

Following this, we updated our policies and practices in Australia and New Zealand from a prevention focus. When it comes to inappropriate behaviour, for example, we created access to an anonymous, external party who our people can ring to report an issue, and who will provide support and advice about how to tackle it. This has been very helpful, and it empowers everyone, not just women. It has brought independence and support into the organisation.

Depending on the nature of the issue reported, does action result?

Yes. When the person involved has had a conversation as a result of the third-party advice, their manager now has information to take action. There is a very clear path, which helps the person involved have their voice heard.

How have employees responded to these initiatives?

It is helping our people get advice to come forward. Whereas previously you might have sat with something, having someone outside of Arup to speak with validates your concerns and removes any worry you may have about career progression or opportunities. This is very powerful.

We’ve also started the organisation-chart (org-chart) challenge in some offices. When big projects and all charts are pulled together, we create an independent group that is empowered to challenge the gender diversity of what has been put up. They might ask whether this the only way we can deliver on a project (the org-chart might be 90% men, 10% women), if there are people we haven’t thought of, whether we always pick the same people, and how we can develop others. These questions bring a different lens to ensure we are creating opportunities for women as much as everyone else to step into career progression. They remove any subconscious bias, encourage a different conversation, and increase people’s awareness for the next time they do the all-chart. There will come a point at which this is just built into the organisation.

Do you have advice for organisations who would like to achieve this 40:40:20 spread but don’t know where to start?

I think it’s being very clear about your culture and who you want to be as an organisation – what you want your people to experience during their working life with you. The employee experience is really important.

People are at the heart of Arup’s business so we must create an environment that helps all people, regardless of their group (gender, race, minorities), to be successful. We must create an inclusive environment with the right business focus that everyone can work in.

Arup has a very clear sense of purpose built on six key values, which emanated from founder Ove Arup’s key speech in the 1970s. These are doing socially useful work, being honourable in its dealings and a humane organisation, having total design in its approach, looking for reasonable prosperity in the work it does, and focusing on the quality of its work.

Arup tries to produce a business that has great integrity but is also collaborative in its approach and has a strong focus on technical excellence. Having a very clear picture of your sense of purpose and values helps you work out how you need to show up for your people and that would be a great starting point for anyone. This is not something you can do on the side; it must be at the core of who you are as an organisation – your culture and values, and inclusivity forms part of this.

Once you’ve listened to your people and identified some clear issues to tackle, you can start to address them.

Does Arup attract people because of its DEI strategy and clear sense of purpose?

We get a very diverse range of candidates, which is replicated in our offices. I think people associate us with an organisation that has inclusivity at its heart.

You joined Arup in 2020. Have you noticed progress in the sector overall in terms of the 40:40:20 spread or is Arup standing alone?

I think there are two layers to this. In New Zealand, we have a much stronger representation of women in infrastructure now than in the early 2000s. We’ve evolved and are engaged in keeping women and have some great leaders. But there’s still work to be done in building a good layer of gender representation, and a pipeline to that leadership layer, across all our organisations.

What is front of mind for Arup regarding its 40:40:20 commitment?

Arup has a beautiful sense of purpose in how the business operates overall and an advantage in how it attracts people, but we must ensure we continue doing what we set out to and not take anything for granted. The challenge remains to make sure we’re all intentional about building a pipeline of women to take on the leadership reins.

Covid has had a significant impact on women over the last five years, which is well documented. Increasing domestic responsibilities alongside work placed a lot of pressure on women who are now doing multiple roles in a very constrained environment, and this has impacted the pipeline. You don’t want a situation where you have good women leaders but no pipeline behind them. This is behind my focus in building the leadership pipeline so that 40:40:20 also means we have good representation of diversity in leadership that makes good decisions.

I’d like to get to a point where we are a 40:40:20 business as usual; that it’s what good looks like in terms of how our people are feeling – that they belong, are supported, and can speak out. Our culture is connected to this goal and there’s still a lot of work in front of us but, for me, this is the aim.