Many A/E firm leaders lament the shortage of capable professionals in the design industry. While the shortage of design professionals, especially in certain specialties, is real, many firms make the hiring process more difficult by restricting their recruiting of women.

Although it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender when hiring, and things have improved for women over the years, there is still a bias against women in some A/E firms. This attitude is counterproductive, especially over the long run. Firms that discriminate against women reduce their pool of potential employees, yet some firms continue to screen out women candidates during recruiting, even when they are in desperate need of additional staff.

While women sometimes present managers with challenges as they go through their child-raising years, it is well worth the effort to hire them and integrate them into the workforce, says Lynn S. Miggins, P.E., the majority owner and president of KS Associates in Akron, OH. Miggins, who has 30 years in the engineering profession, herself went through the same professional and work/life challenges that women experience today. She has taken what she's learned and applied it to her firm to make the workplace climate amenable to women. Her 50-person civil engineering and land surveying firm's workforce is composed of about 25% women, significantly higher than the industry average of less than 10%.

As many women decide to take a few years off, or at least reduce their work hours, in order to raise children, firms that want to retain them have to make adjustments for their needs. "A lot of women drop out of the industry when entering their child-raising years," Miggins says. As a result, they aren't able to keep up with technological changes and lose contacts with clients. "We have to keep them engaged during their child-raising years," Miggins says. "That's a problem I'm trying to address in my firm."

KS Associates offers flex-time and part-time schedules to accommodate working mothers. Flexible and part-time hours create scheduling challenges for managers, Miggins acknowledges. A key to making non-traditional work schedules successful, she says, is to negotiate hours in advance and make sure both managers and employees are committed to sticking to the schedule. Miggins works out 30-day schedules in advance to accommodate her part-time workers.

Some women employees that work part-time actually make better use of their work hours than other employees, Miggins says. Their productivity is high because they know that their family commitments require them to be masters of their schedules. Every minute is precious because they have so many things to do outside of work, leaving little time to waste both on and off the job.

Many top managers at other firms agree in principle with Miggins's overall strategy in accommodating the needs of women in the workplace. Unfortunately, some of those firms do not want to actually make the effort to change their policies.

"I have a colleague who was with another firm, and when she had a child she asked to go to more of a part time schedule," Miggins says. "The firm agreed, but undermined her success by scheduling staff meetings on days that she was off. She began to feel like she had been demoted. Her firm paid lip service to a flex schedule, but did not really provide the support that she needed."

Is this effort worth it? It is, particularly if you realize that your firm is better off with able part-time contributors rather than being without them altogether. Also, keep in mind that as the children of part time mothers grow up, some of these part-timers will want to increase their hours, eventually returning to a full-time role. Think of this as building your bench for the long term.

What do you think? Let us know...

Justin Roy is a Principal with SullivanKreiss. He can be reached at jroy@sullivankreiss.com .

• Less than two percent of high school graduates will earn engineering degrees?
• Colleges and universities are having difficulty recruiting women engineering students?
• Today, just 20 percent of undergraduate engineering students are women?
• Even more astounding is the number of women engineers in the professional workforce - less than ten percent!