Our People

We attract, develop and promote the best people to enable us to provide an exemplary service to our customers.

Our 2025 engagement survey showed 98% feel welcome, included and accepted. The fact that such a high proportion of employees would recommend Willmott Dixon to others highlights our strong people-focused culture and commitment to excellence.

In 2025 recognition received included:

• Ranked top for our industry in the Financial Times’ ‘Europe’s Diversity Leaders’ list.
• In The Sunday Times Best Places to Work guide, Willmott Dixon ranked in the top 10 of the ‘Big Company’ category and was named the best large construction company to work for in the UK.
• We placed fourth in the Financial Times Best Employers list of the top 1,000 companies in Europe – one of only two UK companies featured in the top 10. This achievement was driven by feedback from our people.

Support for families

We offer our people enhanced family leave benefits to further support working parents in recognition of the importance of family to us and our people. Our people receive enhanced benefits from day one, including 26 weeks full pay for maternity/adoption leave and 8 weeks paternity/partner leave. A ‘Welcome Back’ programme and manager workshops ensure our people are well-supported on their return from a career break.

Gender balance and women in construction

Operating within the construction industry, where just 14% of the workforce is female, we must attract and retain more women to address the skills shortage. Evidence shows diverse teams perform better and our customers want teams on their sites that reflect their communities. Enhancing workforce diversity is a long-held company value.

In 2025, we remained focused on strengthening our initiatives to attract, retain, and develop women across our company.

We continued to invest in our award-winning Women’s Leadership Programme, which has played a significant role in progressing women into senior positions. In December, we celebrated the successful completion of our fourth cohort, comprising 17 women from across the business. They now join our growing community of women leaders, supporting our ambition to develop 100 women through this programme by 2030 - a target we remain on track to achieve.

Our affinity groups continued to grow and provide spaces for colleagues to connect, share experiences, raise awareness, and support one another. This includes a Women in Operations group for women working in operational roles across the business, led by a female Director. Each network was sponsored by a member of our national Diversity Steering Group to ensure we actively listened to colleagues’ feedback and make meaningful improvements that foster a culture of inclusion.

At the end of 2025, the overall percentage of women in the business had increased to 33.7%, from 32.8% last year, and compared to 24% for our 2018 baseline.

% women and different ethnic groups

During 2025 women made up a third of our Holdings Board. All our regional Construction Boards also have at least one woman represented on them. We retained our sponsorship of the Construction News Inspiring Women in Construction and Engineering programme, reinforcing our commitment to driving positive change across the industry.

A community of Safe Talk Champions was established, bringing together specially trained colleagues from across the business to provide a safe space for individuals to speak up, seek support, and help foster an inclusive environment where everyone feels respected.

Diverse workforce

We also aim to attract a more diverse workforce that reflects the communities we serve and to make us a better business. In 2025, 7.8% of our employees were from an ethnic minority background.

We have been members of Black Professionals in Construction since 2021 and two of our regional offices are also members of Building Equality - the LGBT+ Construction Group.

We measure how inclusive our culture is through our staff satisfaction survey. In 2025, women scored 98% for the statement ‘I feel welcome, included and accepted for who I am at work’, and 95% ‘I have equal opportunities regardless of my gender, ethnic origin, disabilities, religion, age or sexual orientation.’

We strive to close our Gender Pay Gap and recognise and champion the achievements of women.

In 2025, the mean average percentage difference in hourly rate between men and women was:

Disability confident employer

We are an approved Disability Confident employer and continue to be a member of the Business Disability Forum. At the end of 2025, 3.5% of our people had declared that they had a disability compared to 3.1% at the end of 2024.

Our Disability Affinity Group met during 2025 to provide a forum for our people to talk about disability, which could be their own disability, or that which friends and family experience.

Attracting the next generation

According to figures by the CITB, 251,000 people are forecast to be needed in the construction sector by 2028. That equates to an increase of over 50,000 people per year over the five years from 2024 – 2028 to meet anticipated industry output.

We have one of the most established and successful management trainee programmes in the industry. We aim for gender parity in our recruitment, and this is demonstrated by 35% of our trainee intake in 2025 being women. In 2025, 41% of management trainees in our business were women, compared to 27% in 2018.

At the end of the year, we had 107 directly employed apprentices in the business. This number has grown considerably since the beginning of the decade as we have changed the way we use the Apprenticeship Levy. Instead of a traditional degree courses, our management trainees are now registered for apprenticeships, including data, construction site management, chartered surveying, quantity surveying and construction site supervision. Completing a Level 6 degree apprenticeship means the trainee still achieves the same degree as they would traditionally have done. However, an apprenticeship route means this is delivered in a more cost-effective way with a wider package of support.

Management trainees and apprentices employed

These figures now capture all apprentices registered on our Digital Apprenticeship Service (DAS) account and is aligned with the Government definition of an apprenticeship.

Willmott Dixon pledge that at least % of our workforce will be in formalised apprenticeships, be sponsored students or on graduate development schemes. Our investment in upskilling saw Willmott Dixon awarded Platinum by the 5% club in its 2024 – 2025 Employer Audit, recognising that over 10% of our team are in hands-on ‘earn and learn’ schemes compared to 6.7% in 2023.

Alongside this, we continued to run other events to attract young people into the industry, such as Career Advisor Days. We continue to sponsor the Construction News Inspire Me programme.

We have been signatories of the Care Leaver Covenant since 2019. We are also signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant and hold their silver award supporting the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.

Investing in our people

Our people are our greatest asset, and we go to great lengths to provide a working environment which sustains a challenged and content workforce.

Willmott Dixon Construction holds the Platinum Investors in People (IIP) status while our Interiors business holds Gold status.

In 2026 we will be working alongside the IIP to support with retaining our Platinum status moving forward. This is a wonderful reflection of how people feel about working for our company, with only 7% of eligible organisations achieving the platinum standard. One great bit of feedback was that 93% of our people think that we have a positive impact on society – our purpose beyond profit approach.

We believe that providing individuals with opportunity for personal growth is essential to their wellbeing. Our shift to agile working led us to creating learning resources to help our people understand how to work and lead virtually.

In 2025, we also made it easier for our people to share their skills and learn from each through a new ‘Learning from each other’ portal on our virtual Willmott Dixon University. This online catalogue brings together a wide range of content created by our people, for our people. It’s designed to make it easier for everyone tap into the collective knowledge that already exists across the business.

We invested £2.6m into our people’s learning and development in 2025. The average spend on training totalled £1,335.39 per employee.

Total amount spent on learning and development

The Willmott Dixon University (WDU) is continually developed, linking learning resources directly to job profiles and offering options for people to learn in a way that suits them - whether it’s a 9-minute online module, a deep-dive course, a 1:1 coaching session or a leadership programme.

In 2025, we also made it easier for our people to share their skills and learn from each through a new ‘Learning from each other’ portal on the WDU. This online catalogue brings together a wide range of content created by our people, for our people. It’s designed to make it easier for everyone tap into the collective knowledge that already exists across the business.

A key part of the Willmott Dixon University, the School of Coaching (SOC) is an innovative online portal where all our people can find a free coach to help them in their career development. We currently have 27 coaches in the SOC who all work for Willmott Dixon, giving up their time and using their skills to support their colleagues. This peer-to-peer learning approach has established a new way for our people to learn from one another beyond the training room and get tailored support for their career development.

One participant said: “My coach challenged me with thought provoking questions. This made me think outside my usual answers and gave me confidence for having tough conversations.”

Recently, the Willmott Dixon University was updated to provide visual vertical and lateral career paths for our people, diversifying traditional career routes and encouraging upskilling and cross skilling across the business.

Supporting wellbeing

Delivering brilliant buildings for our customers is an exciting and rewarding challenge for our people, but it can be stressful and demanding and so we are very mindful of the wellbeing of our people.

We continue to support our people and supply chain people on our sites via the ‘All Safe Minds’ initiative, with about 100 trained mental health first aiders (MHFAs) across the business, plus a dedicated app and a wellbeing hour. Our network of Mental Health Leads are dedicated to improving and supporting mental health of our people and have introduced quarterly campaigns, for example, raising awareness of the support provided by the Samaritans mental health awareness campaigns, offering advice and content for our people.

We have been a proud company supporter of Lighthouse – The Construction Charity, since 2023. Lighthouse provides emotional, physical and financial wellbeing support to the construction community and their families.

By the end of 2025, our eight Affinity Groups continued to provide a space for our people to share experiences, covering Armed Forces, Disability, Ethnicity, LGBTQ+, Women in Operations, Neurodiversity, Menopause and Parents. Senior management sponsor and listen to the groups; for example, the Menopause Affinity Group has been influential in our decision to fund 100% of the BUPA Menopause plan for its women and 75% for partners of our people.

Our Menopause Café also continued to offer a supportive platform for women and male allies. Guest speakers led sessions on fitness, nutrition, mindset strategies, and breathwork to help individuals navigate menopause with confidence.

We offer all our people the chance to take more time off to support their wellbeing through our ‘Buying Holiday’ benefit.

Supporting sustainability

To recognise our people’s loyalty, we offer a £750 Personal Learning or Sustainability Fund after five years of service. This can be used for sustainable home improvements, such as installing sustainable home improvements, or gaining new skills and experiences from sky diving to singing lessons or learning a new language, or a combination of both. Over 140 people used these benefits in 2025.

We continued to make strong progress toward our sustainability goals, with 33% of all fleet drivers - including those using their own vehicles - now choosing an electric or hybrid car in 2025. Of these, 407 colleagues are driving through our salary sacrifice scheme, which fully supports the transition to low‑emission motoring by covering servicing, maintenance, insurance and road tax. We are also continuing to offer up to £1,500 per person to help with the cost and installation of a home charge point, reinforcing our commitment to making cleaner, more sustainable travel accessible for everyone.