The Construction Inclusion Coalition’s 2026 conference urged industry leaders to move beyond policies and good intentions and embed inclusion into everyday leadership, behaviour, and decision-making.
The challenge was at the heart of this year's Coalition in Conversation (CIC) event, which brought together senior figures from across construction and the built environment – including leading building materials manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors – in Birmingham under the theme ‘Inclusion Starts with… Action'.
Opening the event, Jen Cassidy, CEO of Bristan Group and Chair of the CIC, highlighted the industry's ongoing recruitment and retention challenges and the importance of creating workplaces where everyone can fulfil their potential. She said: "The reason the CIC exists is because we can't leave talent on the sidelines. Our industry has a talent problem. It has a recruitment problem. It has a retention problem."
Now in its third year, the CIC has grown to more than 40 members and 19 strategic partners, and its latest benchmarking survey shows progress. Some 59% of participating members are working towards a culture-focused inclusion strategy, while 30% now have intentionally inclusive recruitment policies, compared with just 6% in 2024.
However, speakers challenged businesses to focus on closing the gap between their commitments and the everyday experience of people working across the sector.
Speaking in her keynote, Teresa Boughley, author and founder of Jungle HR, said: "Inclusion is 24/7, not just when people are looking or an agenda item. It really is every single day, every single action that we take."
Leadership was also a major focus of the event, with Lee Chambers, founder of Male Allies UK, bringing together Daksh Gupta of Huws Gray, Paul Asquith of Selco, Ashley Cooper of Triton, and Jo Shepherd of Worcester Bosch for a discussion on inclusive leadership in practice.
The panel explored senior leaders' responsibility to set the tone, challenge established behaviours and lead by example, drawing on their experiences of recognising bias, questioning assumptions and creating opportunities for others.
Summarising, Lee Chambers said: "The biggest barrier to being an inclusive leader is thinking I already am."
Hollie Cregan, Head of Equality, Diversity and FIR at GRAHAM, demonstrated what this can look like in practice, sharing the organisation's approach to embedding Fairness, Inclusion and Respect into existing business processes.
This includes training more than 100 Fairness, Inclusion and Respect ambassadors to support colleagues on construction sites, introducing an anonymous Speak Up reporting process and integrating inclusion considerations into site welfare arrangements.
The conference concluded with delegates identifying actions they would take within their own workplaces, as well as commitments to support wider progress through the CIC.
Concluding, Chair Jen Cassidy urged businesses to give inclusion the same priority as other measures of organisational performance. She said: "Treat this as importantly as you treat revenue, profit, health and safety, because it drives all of those things."
