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Introduction
The most up to date calculations of price, cost indices and outputs reveal that the UK construction industry contributes a healthy 6 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP; [23] Office for National Statistics, 2008). However, despite the negative impact of the credit crunch, the industry sector still faces an ongoing skills shortage and diversity-based recruitment levels are currently inadequate in meeting this severe skills gap ([7] ConstructionSkills, 2008). The UK construction industry is attempting to fill this gap in the short term by hiring workers from low-wage economies, rather than recognising the longer-term business case advantage of expanding the recruitment of women ([17] Gurjao, 2006). Although there has been a numerical increase in the numbers of women and black and minority ethnics (BMEs) entering the industry, this is only in line with the overall growth of the industry sector. In real terms, diversity-based percentiles have remained relatively unchanged, consisting of between 10 per cent and 12 per cent of women and 2-4 per cent of BMEs since the year 1990. The low numbers of women in the UK construction industry lie in stark contrast with the current all-industry employment standard of 46 per cent for women and 8 per cent for BMEs ([7] ConstructionSkills, 2008). These issues also extend beyond the UK to European markets in terms of concerns over human resource (HR) management ([24] Schloesser et al. , 1999).
The latest governmental figures from the [23] Office for National Statistics (2008) have been a re-weighted since May 2008. Figures can therefore vary within a few percentiles according to differing measurements ([15] Gale and Davidson, 2006). For this paper, those put forward by the latest governmental population weightings and employee base from the [23] Office for National Statistics (2008) will be utilised; these are listed in Table I [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]. In addition to a lack of gendered diversity there is the issue of a "workforce time bomb" of a rapidly ageing workforce ([7] ConstructionSkills, 2008). There is a year-on-year increase in workers who are heading towards retirement age with a current inadequate supply of replacement workers ([17] Gurjao, 2006). For example, those workers aged over 40 have increased on average by 2 per cent each year since 1990...