The ROD team on the A6 dualling scheme in Northern Ireland is made up of Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Polish, British, Indian, Greek, Dutch and Irish technicians, engineers and support staff.
At ROD, we believe that recruiting staff with differing perspectives, backgrounds and cultures is important to creating well-rounded teams, developing innovative ideas and challenging the status quo.
A good mix of talents and skills will ultimately make for a stronger, more collaborative company and bring more effective results to our clients.
Creating and developing a diverse workforce
The shortage of engineers graduating from universities and the fact that relatively few women and minorities pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers makes the task of attracting diverse talent difficult, however.
To address this challenge, we are increasing our international recruitment efforts, working harder to attract women into the company and investing considerable resources in schools’ initiatives aimed at encouraging more male and female students into engineering, such as Engineers Ireland’s STEPS programme.
Graduates
Our graduate programme builds upon the core of diversity—diverse talent, experiences, connections, and training. As our graduates move through four, six-month-long rotations designed to develop their technical knowledge across multiple discipline areas, they are encouraged to forge their own career paths and networks within the company.
Promoting the profession
We take an active role in industry-wide initiatives aimed at raising the profile of the engineering profession, including Engineers Week.
We are also committed to ensuring the highest consideration towards the community, the environment and our workforce in all our Irish and UK-based projects. In 2017, for example, we won CEEQUAL’s highest award for our first major road scheme in Northern Ireland, the A2 Shore Road to Greenisland upgrade, in recognition of its significant contribution to improving the sustainability of the community it serves.
Promoting a positive culture
In May 2019, ROD was the first consulting engineers in Ireland to become a registered professional the Considerate Constructors Scheme, an initiative established by the construction industry to promote a positive culture of safety and respect on construction sites, within the local community and the environment impacted by construction activity.
Our membership of the scheme was recently renewed for a further 12 months, with the auditor affirming that “the scheme’s values align with ROD’s own ethos and outlook.”
International Women’s Day 2020
Our efforts at creating a more diverse team and a more inclusive workplace were recently acknowledged by Michelle Harvey, office manager at our head office in Sandyford, in her recent article to celebrate International Women’s Day 2020.
Reflecting on her 21 years with the company, Michelle commented:
"With over 200 people now working with us, one of the biggest changes I have seen is in the number of female staff members at ROD. Where once I was one of five females, I am now one of 44 - 10 of whom work in administration and support and 34 of whom are technical.
We have also become more diverse in terms of the nationalities within our team. I now boast of having colleagues from Italy, Spain, Poland, Brazil, China. South Africa, New Zealand, India and France, to name just a few. As a home bird myself, I am very much in awe of my colleagues’ ability to pack up their lives and move to Ireland or the UK to join our team. They are like a breath of fresh air in the company."
