Adam Copp is a CEO who wants to see more Dads taking parental leave and more organisations proactively encouraging them to do so.
This ambition stems from his own personal experience seeing how transformative such leave can be in learning to care for a child.
It also comes from knowing the significant cultural shift around family friendly practices that’s needed for the infrastructure sector in Australia, which is in need of 225,000 more workers if the country hopes to deliver on major projects.
Copp is at the helm of Infrastructure Australia, which has this week announced it’s been certified as a Family Friendly Workplace by Parents At Work and UNICEF Australia.
He didn’t see many male leaders ahead of him taking parental leave or working flexibly, and also recalls meeting soon-to-be fathers in a parenting class and finding out that many of them had access to great paid parental leave, but they didn’t feel like they could actually take it.
He personally realised he wasn’t across the skills needed for caring before taking paid parental leave when his daughter was close to turning one.
“It wasn’t like I’d been sitting on the couch with my feet up for ten months,” he says.
“I’d been working hard and doing the cooking and cleaning – but I hadn’t been caring, and I was missing the basics.”
He says the paid parental leave supported him in gaining some of the ‘on the job’ skills needed for parenting, that he’s carried as he and his partner have further grown their family and their careers.
At Infrastructure Australia, Copp leads an organisation with a near 50/50 gender split, and one that’s at the heart of understanding the needs of the construction sector as a government organisation responsible for offering independent infrastructure advice.
But as the push is on to attract more people to construction, especially to meet the needs of Australia’s ambitions for building and supporting major projects into the project, Copp says we need a significant shift in the opportunities available for everyone to get involved in caring.
That means breaking down engrained stereotypes about who does what at home, which are even harder to break across male-dominated sectors like construction.
Last year, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reported a nine per cent increase in workplaces offering gender-neutral and label-free leave in the 2022-23 period. However, it also found that male-dominated industries were far less likely to offer such leave than female-dominated industries.
Even when such leave is offered to men, new fathers are still not taking enough of it.
“Part of the problem is social constructs, and how paid parental was set up from the beginning, where we have been told there are ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ carers” Copp says.
“Then in many ways, the setup of paid parental leave is done as a way to try and avoid people scamming the system, rather than supporting Australians during one of the most explosive times in their working lives.”
In searching for improvements at Infrastructure Australia, Copp consulted the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, the Australia Public Service Commission, and Parents At Work.
On the latter, Copp later led the organisation to become family-friendly certified through Family Friendly Workplaces, which he believes will be a competitive advantage for retaining and attracting team members.
“What we’ve found in having that public accreditation is that it will be beneficial in terms of attracting and retaining the staff that we’ve already got.”
Infrastructure Australia now offers 18 weeks of flexible paid parental leave to all employees regardless of gender, enabling staff to choose how they use the leave in a way that suits their family circumstances.
Copp says the FFW process also supported the organisation in firming up its flexible work options. Infrastructure Australia offers a “high trust culture” for staff and allows teams to determine how and when they come into the office.
“It allows us to access a different type of employee. We can’t pay as much as say consulting services, but there are a range of really smart, fantastic people who are really willing to come and work for a purpose-driven organisation that offers great flexibility.
Improving gender diversity at Infrastructure Australia has been a work in progress, and follows a strong focus on recruitment.
Having been in the CEO role since midway through 2023, Copp also notes the power of having a female leader at the top – Infrastructure Australia’s former CEO, Romily Madew.
“It’s something I’ve had to think a lot about in terms of my leadership, taking over from Romily and making sure that I’m still out there talking about these issues,” Copp says.
Infrastructure Australia has made recommendations to the Australian Government to work with the infrastructure industry to address the lack of flexibility and diversity that has hindered its ability to overcome dire staff shortages, especially with women making up just 14 per cent of the sector’s workforce.
“There are a number of recommendations we make on how the industry can overcome these
worker shortages, including addressing its culture, so it is more appealing especially to young
people,” he says,
“We have tried to lead by example by making flexible working a core part of our organisation’s
identity and embedding that into our culture and policies.”
Copp adds that there’s significant working going into the Culture and Construction Taskforce about improving working hours and wellbeing.
“It’s especially something that we’re advocating for, for the sector more broadly, that the construction industry really needs to change, how it does its work so that we can meet the demands of what we need for infrastructure going forward.”
Copp also personally tries to model flexibility and highlights the joys and challenges of parenting.
“My wife and I both take parenting very seriously, but we also both have big careers. So we just try and manage between each other on who needs to step up on any particular issue. It’s a constant negotiation, but we make it work.”
Asked how he manages himself outside of work and parenting, Copp says he has focused this year on doing things that increase his energy.
That means running and lifting and having a strong focus on diet and sleep.
“The big job isn’t going away. Your parenting responsibilities aren’t going away. So you need to expand your ability to meet those demands. Focusing on at least a little bit of self care makes a difference in terms of not feeling like you’re failing in every sphere of your life.”
We spoke with Adam Copp as part of our partnership with Family Friendly Workplaces.