EEBA's High Performance Home Blog

We built this home to educate everybody in the construction industry that there is a place for women to work making a good living, teaching a new generation that there are no longer traditional roles in the workplace, and to help eliminate the shortage of labor in our industry which is an ongoing problem. We feel like women can be a part of that solution. --  Jennie Tanner, President of the Utah Professional Women in Building.

When you're a little girl, parents don't often think about saying, “Hey, why don't you get a job in construction? Have you thought about being a plumber or an electrician?” Even school counselors don't discuss these options with girls. And so, three years ago, I joined the Utah-based charter of the National Association of Homebuilders and came up with an idea to build the first all-women-built home in the nation.

Today, I will talk about the importance of recruiting a diverse workforce. My goal is to end this conversation with clear, actionable goals for everyone. We want to have a plan in place. I think that's what’s so important. I want to tell you about some of our learning objectives today. Of course, we'll review the data because I always say, "the numbers don't lie." We must look at what statistics tell us, and that will guide us in the direction of where we need to make a change. We really have to increase our awareness of our unconscious bias…how we can move from those biases and find tools to help us be more successful? It's important not just to set an action plan, that your board or your company will say this is our plan and then, four years later, no one's touched that plan. You want something that's a living document that you can continue to focus on, reassess, reinvent, and move the needle.