Rachel, leading a hybrid session with the We Lead women’s initiative at Givaudan.
It’s always a bittersweet wrap up to Women’s History Month in March and all of the celebration and intentional work that is initiated around International Women’s Day.
We had a great month, working with past clients like Givaudan and the KaoNow women’s network as well as new clients NRG and Gerdau who selected our special IWD program, Practicing Equity.
During the sessions we built on the International Women’s Day theme of #EmbraceEquity by looking inward at our own unique needs and put a framework around developing our own equitable resource plans.
The sessions centered around 3 main areas of potential inequities—manager support, burnout and internalized biases. In discussing how bias and inequities tend to creep into these areas, especially for women and underrepresented employees, we worked with participants to identify the areas where they needed more support and also empowered one another to ask for it.
Participants shared their own success stories asking for support, with one participant requesting more frequent 1:1s with their manager to get more direct feedback. Another worked on prioritizing their efforts by taking stock of how much time all of their tasks and responsibilities truly required. And another implemented a “check” when they felt they were holding themselves back.
For some serving in managerial roles, they recognized how focusing on equity for their reports was more important than equality—truly understanding the difference for the first time.
It’s so powerful to take time to actively listen to others needs, but also actively listen to your own. You matter, your needs matter, and you deserve support and resources to meet them. While March might be over, the IWD theme lives on as does the call to action for progress.
Join us in taking equity one step further.