What does diversity really mean for the property profession?

So I'm gonna, gonna ask some very general questions to our panelists, and I'm gonna start with you, Tim.

So kind of the first one is, do you think the industry is doing enough to attract and retain all sorts of diverse groups into senior roles-

No

... within property?

I don't.

I think one of the problems has been, and it, it's getting better, but we've got a long way to go.

But, you know, all of our clients, all of the, the people that use our buildings, all of the people around us in our profession could reflect that.

We should reflect it in our training.

We should reflect it in our businesses.

We should reflect it in the seniorities.

So in answer to your question, I don't think we've been good.

I think that there are wonderful initiatives underway, and they have been there for quite a long time.

But we still are not getting it, and if you look at the major advisory businesses in this country, property advisory businesses, and then start looking at the makeup of the, how, how diverse they are in terms of their senior leadership, I think you, I think we would all be very surprised and very disappointed because our clients are diverse.

Our businesses should also be, should reflect that diversity.

So if you were a chairman of a big corporate, how would you try to address that?

We tried.

Well, so when I was with Cushman & Wakefield, we tried desperately to find ways of getting ethnic and gender diversity going, and I'm, I'm talking about some time ago, so before the question of sexual orientation became more important than it is now or more spoken about than it is now.

But we had a really frustrating time, and in the end, we went back to the schools, uh, and started providing scholarships for- Boys and girls from a very diverse and very generally fairly difficult backgrounds to drive them through sixth forms, to pay them to stay sixth forms, to go to, uh, to do their A-levels, then to give them some work experience, and then to take them through university, and then bring them into the profession and take them up to the first APC, if you like.

Uh, and we did this for a number of people.

We didn't do it for enough because it is quite a costly thing for a business to do.

But, you know, that's, that's what we did.

And if you, if, if I ask myself now what we should have done more, you know, back in the 2000s, the early 2000s, I would have said we should have pushed ourselves, we should have pushed our managing partners and, and the all of the people that were in key positions within the business to just be so conscious of it.

Because, as I say, our clients are diverse.

We should reflect that diversity.