My name is Pauline White and I work for Zurich Insurance in Glasgow in
our Real Estate Propositions team.
I am also the Vice Chair of our Women's Innovation Network, WIN
UK, which seeks to highlight opportunities for the business to
change, whilst encouraging women to take control of their own
careers.
WIN has an outreach to over 900 members in the UK, and we hope
to reach 1000 soon, with key committees working across 10 of our
regional offices and overseeing three pillars we wish to influence
and support within the business: career development; driving
cultural change; networking and influencing.
Six years ago I took the plunge. I left a company I had
worked with for 26 years and made my way out in to the big bad
world to look for a new job.
Was it scary? Absolutely.
Was it easy? Definitely not, especially the first few years.
Do I regret it? No I don't.
It made me look at myself, what made me happy, what didn't and
shook me out of the very comfortable rut I had been in.
I had to learn about CVs, networking, LinkedIn and all manner of
things I had not done for such a long time.
But I'm happy at where it got me. I am now working for a company
which not only encourages diversity and inclusion, but supports me,
by giving the time and space to do something I value - giving
back.
There have long been concerns about the lack of women in financial
services, particularly at senior levels. It is increasingly
apparent that many women are stuck in middle management positions
in the sector. This can be for a number of reasons including
an absence of role models and mentoring, a lack of careers
information and unsuitable or inefficient talent spotting. Action
is needed through leadership development programmes, sponsorship,
mentoring and coaching to enable women to effectively develop their
careers and move into more senior and technical roles.
In the past, I was one of these women. I have two beautiful
daughters and went back part time after the second. I accepted that
meant that I wouldn't really progress because of this and, looking
back now, it makes me quite cross that I limited myself like
that.
So how has Zurich gone about tackling these issues?
Firstly, flexwork. Zurich in the UK launched 'FlexWork' in
November 2017. This empowers all our people, both men and
women, to work where, when and how they choose, allowing them to
break free of the 9-5pm office life that can be difficult to manage
alongside other commitments.
Secondly, earlier this year, we changed the wording on all of
our job adverts. We now offer every role as full time, part time,
job share or flexwork. These 9 words resulted in our female
applicants increasing by 25% (45% in senior management
roles).
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