I have been in this industry for more than 30 years and have been pondering this term for some time.  Especially over the past few years where we have all been witness to so much social unrest and calls for gender and racial equality.  

Seriously… in 2021, in this day and age, should we still be quoting and charging “Man Days” for jobs that can (and often are) performed equally by a man or a woman? 

In fact, because of perceived superior “soft skills,” some argue women are better equipped to perform certain kinds of audit activity, especially in the social accountability arena.  Having good emotional intelligence competencies and so called “soft skills” help tremendously when conducting employee interviews as an example and we know some studies show women actually score higher than men on nearly all emotional intelligence competencies.

I’m not necessarily advocating that more women should be performing facility audits or product inspections.  In fact, I’m pretty sure we already have lots of women worldwide performing audits; ironically, all that work is typically billed as a “Man Day.”

My beef is with the antiquated terminology.  Can Intertek take the lead to change the industry by abolishing the term “Man Day” where possible?

Can we adopt “Person Day” or something else that is gender neutral? 

Where accreditation bodies still require reference to “Man Day” for whatever reason, can Intertek be the one to take the lead to lobby for change, or will we remain with the status-quo?

Just food for thought as we think about Building Back an Ever Better…

Roque