DriveWealth has been in a period of hypergrowth in the past year, adding over one hundred new employees to the organization. In March of 2021, a new group was started to support women in the organization through networking and development opportunities. Women at DriveWealth meets monthly with varying topics and activities during the virtual sessions. Since the group has begun, there has been a desire to provide structured professional development opportunities to the group participants. Based on participant feedback, the planning team chose to offer Gild Collective’s Communicating Confidently and Assertively workshop.
Case Study: InfoSec Unconscious Bias Series
Infosec helps IT and security professionals advance their careers with skills development and certifications. The organization recently initiated a Women at InfoSec employee resource group and one of the group’s first recommendations was a company-wide bias training. We worked with the team to develop a 3-part series to provide a foundational bias understanding and tailored tools for interrupting bias for both individual contributors and managers.
Case Study: Gild Collective Women's Initiative Roundtable
We are taking a bit of a different approach with today’s case study than our previous summaries of client work. Instead, we want to celebrate our Women’s Initiative Roundtable, which we have been producing for over three years locally in Cincinnati. I’m writing about the Roundtable because the main purpose it serves - community - is the thing that so many of us are missing so much right now. While we can’t currently gather in-person with our Roundtable community it still brings great value, and we are excited to see how it evolves in the years to come.
Building a Successful Women’s Initiative
How do I handle sensitive topics at work?
One of the things we often hear is that people perceive the women’s initiative to be a place where everyone goes to complain. What we know, is that this is far from true, and that there are impactful, uplifting, and empowering conversations at every gathering of these initiatives, and we can’t allow those perceptions to keep us from addressing the challenges that individuals are facing at work, even the sensitive ones.
Tips to Increase Attendance at Women’s Initiative Events
You reserve the room. You order the catering. You bring in the perfect speaker. You send the invites and track the responses.
You plan an event. And people don't show up.
If you are painfully nodding along, you are not alone. So many of our clients struggle with the challenge of simply getting people to show up for the events that they have spent time, money, and effort to plan. Of course, most people are respectful—they let you know they can no longer make it, they lament that their travel schedule puts them out of the office the day of the event, they promise to attend the next one. The interest and intention are there, which you know because you have asked the attendees what they want. So how can you get past the last-minute fire drills and get people to show up for your events and programs?
Making Measurable Change: Strategy & Training for Women's Initiatives
A Week in the Life: The Gild Collective Workshop Experience
Three Reasons to Get Creative with your Women’s Initiative
At Gild, we are notorious for loving to get our hands dirty with a creative project. Although our business has changed and grown a lot over the past few years, we have always had a mission at the heart of what we do that centers around confidence, creativity, and community. And while our central focus has shifted from craft projects to women’s issues (in the form of workshops, strategy, and training), creativity is still at the heart of what we do. We often get questions about why we are so passionate about the benefits of being creative with your women’s initiative participants, so we thought we’d share a few of those benefits here.
Responding to Women’s Initiative Pushback
We’ve heard just about everything when it comes to the perceptions of women’s initiatives within organizations. We’ve seen organizations where all employees are bought-in—they see the value, and they have both men and women participating in driving equality in the workplace. But, we’ve also seen organizations where there is women’s initiative pushback, or a lack of understanding on what the purpose of the initiative is and the goals it is trying to reach.
Before Convincing Employees that Women’s Initiatives are Worth Their Time, Convince Their Leaders
Busy. Overwhelmed. Buried under work. Treading water. Barely surviving.
These are phrases that we hear our friends (and ourselves) use on a regular basis when we discuss our jobs. When we combine the stress we feel at work with our personal responsibilities outside of the office, it can often feel like too much to juggle. More organizations than ever are trying to serve their female employees through women’s initiatives, many of which aim to help tackle the constant state of “overwhelmed” that many women are stuck in. These initiatives have the best intentions, and even call in outside resources to plan amazing programming for their female workforce. However, organizers still tell us that one of their biggest challenges in getting women engaged is convincing them that women’s initiatives are worth their time– time that, as we know, is a precious and limited resource.
Women's Initiatives: How to Start A Women's Initiative
If you’re new to this series, you may want to check out our recent posts about women’s initiatives: What Are They? and When Do You Need a Women’s Initiative? before digging in here. If you already know that your organization needs to…
What Matters to Women in the Workplace: Communication, Leadership Development, and Unconscious Bias
Bringing Passion Together: The Women’s Initiative Roundtable
Women’s Initiatives: When do you need a women’s initiative?
Women’s Initiatives: What are they?
A women’s initiative can go by many names—a women’s group, a women’s network, a women’s employee resource group, affinity group, or a company-branded network name. While different names may mean slight variations in structure, they all have the goal of bringing together individuals (yes! both women and men) in an organization.