Nicholson Construction has joined with Women's Health Grampians as part of its Communities of Respect and Equality HI-VIS project.

CoRE HI-VIS is run by Women's Health Grampians to support organisations to attract and retain women in non-traditional workforce roles and focuses particularly on trades and manufacturing.

The lack of gender diversity is especially prevalent in the construction industry, with women making up about 10 per cent of the workforce.

Women's Health Grampians manager of strategy and programs Rose Durey said the six key areas for improvement had been identified and an action plan had been developed to tackle those.

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"The action plan focuses on recruitment practices, mentoring women that are on-site and that are with the organisation, looking at workplace flexibility policies and programs and also connecting into the community in terms of pathways into employment for women in the area," she said.

"Some of the actions are around looking at the way a job might be advertised, looking at the images in communications and websites and making sure that they show diversity so that women who might be looking for jobs look on the website and see there are other women here and they're not going to be the only one. It indicates that the workplace culture would be a good fit for them.

"There will be training as well around how to stand up against discrimination or sexism and unconscious bias."

Nicholson Construction said increasing female participation in traditionally male jobs can address skill shortages and stimulate economic growth, along with challenging gender roles and provide role models for future generations.

Submissions, engagement and marketing lead Kasey Cornwell said the project would look at why women are not interested in the construction industry and why those interested are not retained.

"It's to work out why that's the case and then what we can do to improve on that," she said.

"Nicholson Construction understands how women bring different things into the industry and into the workforce and that was one of the reasons behind our directors wanting to be involved as to try and offer obviously a diverse workforce, but also be able to offer the best that males can bring to the industry but also what females can bring to the industry."

Women's Health Grampians received funding for the CoRE HI-VIS project from the Helen McPherson Smith Trust and City of Ballarat.

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