Shawmut’s New York team was honored at Anchin’s 2024 Construction & Design Awards with the Pioneering Industry Leadership Award, recognized for demonstrating exceptional leadership through transformative change, innovation, and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Read about some key initiatives driving progress below.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Shawmut made a more significant and intentional investment in DEI work in 2010, declared it a business imperative in 2014, and has since accelerated this work to consistently drive meaningful change not for just a single initiative or moment in time, but as a sustained, ongoing effort. To date, we have launched numerous industry-leading programs designed to create opportunities and equity for underrepresented groups within and outside the walls of Shawmut. Key initiatives include:

• Sponsorship relationships, which pair high-potential, underrepresented employees with executive sponsors to leverage sponsors’ experience to bolster sponsees’ career aspirations, with the goal of promotion to the leadership team.
• Mentorship program, which pairs mentors and mentees based on goals and experience to make the best matches, eliminating the potential for unconscious bias during the matching process.
• ​Enhanced education and awareness training programs, including an Inclusion Learning and Awareness Plan to help employees learn about, and interrupt unconscious biases, including specific manager development and senior leadership development training.
• Diverse Partnerships Program, which enables economic, social, and community opportunity through strategic partnerships that strengthen and increase business opportunities for Underrepresented Business Enterprises (UBEs). It aims to exceed project requirements or goals set by our partners and is designed to establish lasting partnerships that lead to knowledge-sharing, innovation, and long-term success. 

Mental Health

With mental health the biggest challenge facing the construction industry—more construction workers die each year from suicide and overdose than every other workplace-related fatality combined—it’s our job to provide everyone in our offices and jobsites with both physical and mental health resources, along with support and empathy, so they feel physically and psychologically safe.

• Culture of Care Toolbox Talks are enhanced toolbox talks that address Total Worker Health and safety, with the specific goal of making jobsites more inclusive. Focusing on safety from a mental health and general well-being standpoint, topics including empathy, mental health awareness (PTSD, suicide prevention), and the effects of racism and sexism.
• Mental Health & Wellness Leadership Group, comprised of more than 50 people, across functions, is dedicated to identifying programs, initiatives, and paths to address the mental health crisis in the industry. The ultimate goal is for these practices and initiatives to be implemented and scaled throughout the industry.
• Trainings include suicide awareness, certified mental health first aid, and substance use disorder, including the administration of Narcan, which is supplied on all Shawmut’s jobsites.

Community

Involvement and leadership in industry and community organizations are core to who we are. We’re active members of Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), DICE (Diversity and Inclusion in Construction & Engineering), New York Building Congress, CoreNet New York City, and the NEXT Coalition. We also have established partnerships with local organizations to invest in and elevate students and the leaders of the future—ACE Mentor Program, Summer Search, The Posse Foundation, Salvadori Center, and more. Shawmut has also been a long-time partner of Rebuilding Together NYC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering low-income residents of New York City through the preservation of affordable housing and the development of life-sustaining careers in the construction trades.