01. Who are you, and what is your role?

I am Jacquie Silverton and my role is Mental Health and Diversity Manager. I run the Mental Health Support Programme at SDC, directly with the Managing Director, Adam Knaggs. I lead a group of ‘Mental Health Champions’ to support the mental health of our colleagues and their family members. In the 7 years of running the programme we have helped a lot of people, and that is something I am really proud of. I also lead the Diversity Programme for the company.

02. What has your journey been to get to SDC?

Growing up, I was part of a very large, loving family. My family was not affluent, and I was the first to pass the 11+ which meant I went to grammar school, setting me on a very different path to other members of my family. After school and secretarial college, I went to work in the City for Lloyds of London. This was a shock to some members of my family as they expected me to get married, have children, and get a council flat; that was their expectation of me. This drove me to work my way up to a Personnel role looking after the bank’s traders where I saw in them, a role I knew I could do. I completed the company psychometric testing, which to the surprise of the male-dominated office, I excelled at. From there, I worked on the trading floor, eventually making money and getting in with the team. I loved the job and had the opportunities I would not have had had I not done the job.

I met my husband, who was also a trader, and had children. At this point, I took a 10-year career gap to raise my family, the most important career I have ever had. At one stage, we moved to France and started a holiday business. After a few years, we found we wanted more structure, more stress in our lives, and we came back to England.

This is when I started to look at a career in construction, following a renovation project. At 40, I did a Construction Management degree, following which we started our own residential project management business. I then moved to working for a commercial project management company, building crematoriums across the country.

Following this, I came to work for SDC, predominantly in the Health & Safety department. I loved going in and out of sites, which helps in my current role as people out on sites recognise and know me.

03. What projects are you currently working on?

As well as continuing to support mental health across the company, I more recently recognised the need for more support for female career progression. I took this to the Chairman and Managing Director, and that was the beginning of our journey to greater equality within the company. Steps such as female PPE, formalising of maternity and paternity leave, understanding of menopause symptoms and their affects were taken; we now have dedicated members of staff that either women or their line managers can come to, to access support.

Within my role, I lead diversity training and have spoken to employees from different ethnicities within SDC to understand if they have an issue. Everyone has said they haven’t received discrimination here at SDC, and we need to keep that going. Another focus of mine is how we attract people from different groupings to SDC. That could be an age group who may have a particular skillset, different ethnicities, beliefs and cultures, different genders identities, disabilities; part of this role is to lead discussions on how we show the wider world that we are all encompassing.

I always say, we’re on a journey; we’ve started our journey (which I’m really proud of), but we need to keep going to reflect society, not only that we live and work in, but who we build for. This is where I hope my diversity role leads.

04. What motivates you?

I am a people person; I love people and I love chatting to all different people, from all different walks of life. I think my experience of meeting different people from all around, has given me the comfort just to talk and to listen to people. I also love a challenge, and I love learning. I love the speed of change and being part of a team. This is where I see a comparison between trading and construction because you never know what is going to happen in the day.

Being told I cannot do something is a huge motivator to me. The expectations I came up against as a woman in my youth and early career have massively influenced my drive to ensure gender equality and diversity within SDC.

05. What does working at SDC mean to you?

SDC is a great company, and I love my role in developing approaches to listen to and reflect the diversity of our employees, clients and end users of our buildings. We have the EBT which sets us apart, as well as a huge amount in place to value our employees. SDC has a real family feel, and it is the people who make it such a wonderful place to work!