The workshop, based on a confidential company-wide survey, aimed to offer the support and foster opportunities and confidence to help female employees perform at the highest level.
The awareness-raising event set the workshop the task of measuring Brightstar against the charter’s published targets, discuss career aspirations and goals and allocated time to share experiences and network internally .
The Charter’s commitments:
• Commits firms to supporting the progression of women into senior roles in the financial services sector by focusing on the executive pipeline and the mid-tier level;
• Recognises the diversity of the sector and that firms will have different starting points – each firm should therefore set its own targets and implement the right strategy for their organisation;
• Requires firms to publicly report on progress to deliver against these internal targets to support the transparency and accountability needed to drive change.
Before the workshop, the women also completed an online self-esteem assessment, aimed at measuring confidence levels, which fed into discussions.
Clare Jupp, director of people development led the event along with Brightstar learning champion business consultant, Jo Logan.
Jupp said: “This was a hugely successful event for us and it clear that the work that we have done within the business to ensure gender parity and safeguard equal opportunity has resulted in our women feeling valued, encouraged and confident to try new things and aim high.
“Equally, our men display positive attitudes towards women, this being helped by the fact that no role is gender specific at Brightstar; from PA to director, administrator to divisional manager: all of these roles are performed by both men and women within the business.”
To date, 162 organisations have signed the Women in Finance Charter.
