Louisa's blog: Busy busy..

The summer holidays certainly feel like a long time ago, with a busy autumn now in full swing. Our nanny helpfully mentioned Christmas the other day to my 2.5 year old, who as a result is working hard on her present list in spite of the fact it’s still t-shirt and shorts weather outside. We have lots of great events coming up – over 200 of you have signed up so far to hear Nicola Horlick speak on 30 September, and next week we will be opening registration to our 17 October Speaker Series event with Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court, who will be talking about diversity in the law. Plus, I am already working with Esther Cavett on the next application window for our Citymothers Mentoring Scheme, which we hope to open in November.

We are also adding new events all the time into our 2014-2015 schedule; latest additions include a great seminar on the subject of ‘being a good non-executive director’ in December, a couple of talks in the Spring on dealing with sleep-issues in children run by the ‘3-Day Nanny’ Kathryn Mewes, and a fantastic Speaker Series event in March with Sharon White, the first woman to be appointed as a permanent secretary at the Treasury.

However my attention this week has largely been focused on launching our new initiative ‘WorkLife Central Policy Works’, a positive forum for HR professionals to share knowledge and discuss best practice on key HR policy areas with their peers at other ‘City’ firms.

We felt strongly that the time was right to create this venture and have asked each of our 25 corporate members to nominate an individual within their firm who is actively involved in guiding HR policy, to join the group. Whilst the initiative will be coordinated by us, discussions will be peer-led and we expect CPW will, over time, focus on a broad range of HR policy areas and will not be restricted to maternity / paternity topics. Examples of other topics the groups may cover include flexible working; time off for carers (eldercare/fostercare); wellbeing; occupational sick pay; pay and progression; recruitment and ethics; holiday and holiday pay. The first session will be hosted by The FCA in their capacity as an employer, in November at their offices in Canary Wharf, and will cover HR policy & framework surrounding Shared Parental Leave – a timely topic, given the regulation comes into effect on 1 December.

If you’d like more information on WorkLife Central Policy Works, or anything that we do, please get in touch.

Louisa works full time as Chief Operating Officer of a private equity trade association and runs Citymothers & Cityfathers, a network of over 4,000 members, in her spare time. She has two young children aged 13 months and 2.5yrs.