Released On 11 July 2017
News from Cityparents HQ - July 2017
City career, home life, keeping healthy … how do you make it all work?
Firstly, we want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has participated in our annual Cityparents Survey over the past 2 weeks. We were thrilled to receive over 1,000 responses and appreciate the time you have taken to share your experiences, hopes and concerns with us. Your feedback is fascinating to hear, particularly in the light of the findings published yesterday by the Taylor Review of modern working practices across the UK.
Workplace policies are improving, flexible working is becoming more ‘the norm’, and many senior leaders are articulating their commitment to building diverse and inclusive organisations. Yet workload pressures, lack of career progression support and outdated, biased attitudes are negatively impacting many professionals’ day-to-day experiences of working in the City. For the full story, please click here. An article about our research has also been published by Financial News here.
We’re responding to your feedback by identifying what additional support we can offer to members via new events and topics. We’ll also share our research and recommendations more fully with City employers over the coming months via face-to-face presentations and online downloadable reports via our Cityworks website. If you have other suggestions or are interested in arranging a bespoke presentation at your company, please get in touch.
City employers come together
We’ve been busy welcoming new corporate members to Cityworks, our forum for HR, Diversity & Inclusion and Wellbeing professionals in City firms that we launched at the start of the year. We will shortly be launching a membership for individual HR, D&I and Wellbeing practitioners in City firms, so watch this space or click here to register your interest. We have held networking and speaker events on topics such as gender pay gap reporting, policies to support LGBT and carer employees, mental health and wellbeing, improving racial diversity and more. Our quarterly surveys have looked at shared parental leave and wellbeing policies and we recently launched a handy Diversity Calendar listing major dates and celebrations throughout the year to help with planning workplace initiatives.
After the summer we’re looking forward to hearing from some fantastic guest speakers including Fiona Cannon OBE, Responsible Business & Inclusion Director at Lloyds Banking Group, on agile working; Professor Kathleen O’Connor from London Business School on female progression and Kirsty Bashforth, former Group Head of Organisational Effectiveness at BP on using HR policy to bring about broader culture change. Our regular roundtable policy discussions and webinars with guest contributors will be ongoing throughout the autumn. All our events are listed here; if you are interested to find out more about our corporate membership packages then please click here or get in touch.
A spring celebration
Cityparents runs a cross-company Mentoring Scheme for members of our networks where mentees are matched with a mentor from outside their own firm and sometimes outside their industry/profession. The scheme is administered by global mentoring and development experts Moving Ahead. You can apply to be a mentor or mentee during our twice-yearly application windows in the spring and autumn; further details can be found here.
Our spring application window closed in April and to celebrate the new cohort, Cityparents and Moving Ahead recently put on a special evening event to bring together new mentors and mentees and to welcome back some past scheme participants. The event was kindly hosted by Macfarlanes.
Guest speakers Esther Cavett (Director of the Cityparents mentoring scheme) and Maggie Alphonsi MBE (Lead Facilitator at Moving Ahead, and former international rugby player) shared their experiences of being mentors, and of running mentoring schemes. Panel members discussed how mentoring can be a catalyst for change, with two members of the Cityparents mentoring scheme describing their mentoring journey. The event provided practical tools and tips to equip mentors and mentees as they begin their mentoring relationship, and the evening finished with networking over drinks.
Do you work for a Top Employer?
If so, make sure your organisation takes part in the Top Employers for Working Families benchmark. If they enter by 31st July, they’ll be considered for a much-coveted place in the list of Top 10 Employers which is announced during National Work Life Week - this runs from 2nd to 6th October.
The benchmark, published by our charity partner Working Families, celebrates the achievements of employers who are building agile, flexible and family friendly workplaces. Organisations can compare their progress with their peers and assess whether they are ahead or behind the curve in the development of flexible and family friendly working for all their people.
Want to share a suggestion or feedback?
If you want to get in touch generally with any other suggestions, feedback or questions, you can always post a question or catch the latest updates via our Facebook page, Twitter and LinkedIn group. Or drop us an email. We look forward to talking with you online or at an event soon.