Women in Construction -- the more the better!

Blog by Emily Pierce, PLS, CFedS

It seems like every day there is an observation of some kind.  For example, an important observation occurred on March 6 – it was National Oreo Cookie Day. Rest assured, I didn’t miss observing that important day!

March 6 was also:

• National Dentist’s Day

• National Dress Day

• National Frozen Food Day

• Orthodox Forgiveness Day

• Alamo Day

• National Open Data Day

March 6 is also the start of Women in Construction Week, an observation that is also close to my heart, having been involved in construction and surveying most of my career. Surveying has been an interesting and fulfilling career for me – and for anyone who loves the outdoors, geography, and being part of a great community and a great (and well-compensated) profession.

Emily Pierce surveying in Marathon County, Wisconsin.

I believe in paying it forward, in this case, letting others know about our exciting and rewarding profession. It’s pretty clear that we need more surveyors to join us, and we have to do more than expect members to filter in through colleges and tech schools. There are some great programs we can leverage, such as “Get Kids Into Survey” and NSPS’ Trig-Star program.  Of course, scholarships help as well (Berntsen has been supporting NSPS scholarships since 1985.)

SCARY STATS

The future of our profession is dire. According to NSPS data, potentially 43 percent of surveyors are expecting to retire within the next decade.  Almost every surveyor I talk to is working overtime already - even doubling our already heavy workload won’t take care of all the work coming our way.  There are a couple of ways this can play out, and I vote for getting an infusion of young surveyors, rather than working ourselves to exhaustion.

What we’re already doing isn’t enough – we need new approaches. It’s time to reach out in different ways than we have in the past, and the following statistics show where we need to focus our efforts.

2020 NSPS Survey Question Result.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2020 U.S. workforce was made up of 55% male and 45% female workers. 2020 NSPS statistics show that surveyors reported themselves as 92% male and 7% female, with 1% not answering the question. 

We have made some progress in growing the number of women in surveying since 2016, but it’s a drop in the bucket. In 2016, the percent of female surveyors was 5%, so at that rate of growth it will take 76 years for the male/female surveyor stats to mirror the US workforce stats. 

Looking at the male/female ratio only gives us part of the picture – the ethnic data also tell a story.  According to NSPS survey stats, in 2020, 86% of surveyors were Caucasian, 2.5% Native Americans, 3.6% Hispanic, 3% African-American and 1% Asian/Pacific Islander. 

We can conclude from this info that most surveyors are older white males. Clearly, expecting young white males to flow into surveying to backfill the gap is not working out. We really have to get serious about inviting people from different backgrounds to join us. In short, we need to increase the diversity of the profession.

BUT HOW?

• In the workplace, post openings on job boards that specialize in diversity. Examples of these include:

  • Diversity Working or Diversity Jobs, both some of the largest online diversity job boards.  Then there’s Recruit Disability, which helps locate potential employees with disabilities, and HBCU, a network of students and alumni from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

• Be sure your company’s diversity statement and any current initiatives are obvious on your career page and reference it in every job description that is being offered.

• Diversity training. I’ve been through this a few times and it’s always eye-opening. Discrimination in large and small ways continues to harm our neighbors and friends who don’t look like us. I’ve personally experienced subtle and overt discrimination as a woman in a male-dominated profession, but learning about what other people deal with every day really challenged my world view and has helped me be more aware and more compassionate. 

• Invite employees to share their backgrounds and traditions in the workplace, including religious and cultural practices, and highlight it in your company or organization’s newsletter.

• Develop or amend workplace policies to be more inclusive and diversity-friendly, from hiring practices to performance reviews, promotions, and benefits. Check if your company is an equal opportunity employer and has been approved by the Federal EEOC.

• According to a 2019 article in Harvard Business Review, about 75 percent of respondents reported that the language of their anti-discriminatory policies was insufficient to drive improvements in diversity and inclusion. So, conduct a thorough review of your organization’s existing policies and report those results to the leadership within your organization.

Within the surveying profession, I recommend professional associations to recruit a council of eight to 12 top leaders who are committed to inclusion. They can then meet regularly to create strategies that increase diversity.

I just got back from a speaking engagement at the Minnesota Society of Professional Surveyors (MSPS) and learned that they’ve already created such a group in their organization.  They created the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Committee in their organization just this past summer, and although the group is in its infancy, other states could use them as an example and work collaboratively with them.

OTHER STEPS COULD INCLUDE:

• Incorporate diversity into professional policies and practices

• Strengthen anti-discriminatory policies

• Highlight diversity on professional organization websites

• Incorporate diversity in newsletters and publications

• Introduce the profession to diverse groups

When you’re talking to groups about surveying, here’s a few tips that I’ve learned from experience:

• Know who you are speaking to, what likes and dislikes they have, what makes them different or diverse, and craft your messaging to fit them. It will be a more interesting conversation on both sides.

• Share your own unique life and experiences. Talk about the tremendous variety available in surveying and the exciting physical and mental challenges we enjoy.

• Highlight the wonderful and cool things we get to do every day. We get to be treasure hunters, and archeologists, research specialists, historians, we get to play with amazing technology that continually gets better and gives us new opportunities, such as becoming unmanned aerial vehicle pilots, create three dimensional scans of existing infrastructure and so on. We provide data that helps build roads, tunnels, buildings, We get to do data analysis and create beautiful and informative maps and site plans. We get to understand principles and practices which help us determine public and private rights and ownership.

The diversity in our workforce should be a direct reflection of the diversity in our work. But it doesn’t, because we aren’t sharing our personal stories. We all have amazing stories to tell and the audience is waiting to hear it – we just need to share what we love about surveying. 

So, make a conscious effort this year to do one thing within your organization to promote diversity and inclusion in your workplace.  Then take one action in your professional organization to do the same. 

Let’s get out there and tell the world what an awesome thing being a professional surveyor is…oh, and don’t forget the Oreo cookies!