Last Friday we hosted our first ever online networking event, which we are really pleased to say was a huge success. Like minded professional women came together to share their experiences and ideas on how to make the workplace better for women both for now and in the future. We had lots of interest from our followers and a few that were unable to make the session, but worry not, we’ve provided a summary of the session so if you weren’t able to attend this time, you won’t have to miss out completely.

When we launched the Nonpareil Network back in July 2021 we knew that a huge part of what we wanted to do was to give women in the second halves of their careers a voice. As many of our connections had started to feel more invisible as they hit forty we wanted to give them an opportunity to be heard. So we started with a survey to get the views of women in work and then followed the survey with a series of focus groups where senior professional women shared their experiences, joys and frustrations of what it was like to be a women in work. For our very first online networking event we wanted to share the findings and to discuss how collectively we could come together and make the workplace better for women.

Our survey results showed just how many challenges women at work face:

We started the session by sharing our recent survey results which had highlighted some interesting challenges that we all face. For example based on our survey of over 200 professional women, as many as 77% of them reported that they experienced imposter syndrome or self doubt. Some of the results from our survey were even more shocking, in terms of the numbers of women that had had negative experiences in their careers around sexism, ageism and other discrimination. We then shared the key insights from our focus group sessions which had highlighted that many women were struggling with the menopause or peri-menopause and that they weren’t getting the support at work that they needed. There was also a consensus at the focus groups that women have to cope with too many assumptions made around our commitment once becoming a parent and that references to women’s stereotypes were exceptionally annoying. We’ll be sharing the full results of the survey and focus groups next week.

Sharing experiences with like minded women showed just how much working women have in common:

We then grouped into breakout sessions to discuss how the results resonated with our own experiences. In groups the attendees shared their own views and work stories and they then discussed whether they felt that there had been positive changes over the course of their careers to date and were also asked to consider what further changes need to take place. When we came back together with everyone feeding back, it was good to hear that whilst there were still some issues in place, collectively we felt that things had improved dramatically over the last few years and positive changes were still happening. However, it was also clear that there were some discrepancies depending on where you worked with some employers clearly being further forward in their thinking and approaches than others.

Our expert panel discussed imposter syndrome, flexible working and the challenges faced by women at work:

For our panel discussion we were joined by three industry experts; Emma Bennett who is Head of Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights, Ingrid Simmons a HR Director and Sian Prigg who is the founder of Start Sooner, providing coaching and mentoring for girls and younger women.

The panel discussion covered the challenges of work life balance and how it was difficult for parents to find a balance between home and work commitments. Whilst we felt that home working was helping in many ways we were all too familiar with screen fatigue too. We also discussed imposter syndrome and many felt that whilst not unique to women, it seemed to be more common with women. In Sian’s experience of coaching girls and younger women she confirmed that it was exceptionally common and all too often with the girls she coaches she noticed it could stem from being told that they weren’t good at something when they were younger.

Diversity and inclusion was a point that was raised in the questions and answers with our panel. Recognising that most organisations do now have policies to address this, we discussed how we can ensure that these genuinely become part of organisational culture, rather than something that sits on a shelf or an intranet gathering dust. The group felt that we all have a role to play in making sure that these policies are brought to life - with several guests taking away a commitment to ensure that they do more in this respect in their own organisations.

We ended the panel discussion by talking about the benefits of mentoring, both in terms of being a mentor and in being the mentee. We heard from our panel members, Emma Bennett and Ingrid Simmons, about the mentoring relationship they had had many years ago and how incredibly valuable Emma had found it having Ingrid as a mentor - but how Ingrid too had benefited from the relationship. Several of our attendees agreed that they had found just as much value in mentoring as they had in being mentored, and there was a strong consensus around just how valuable it is to mentor and be mentored throughout your career, whether as part of a formal, ongoing relationship, or more ad hoc, informal mentoring.

As a group we committed to working to make positive changes for all:

Before we ended the session we each shared what we would be doing differently as a result of the discussions which had taken place during the event. People took away an array of actions from reading up more on the subject of diversity to getting a mentor to sharing the findings from the session back in their workplace. We all left feeling positive and empowered that we could make a positive contribution to changing the way that women in their second halves of their careers could be perceived in the future.

So that’s it, a whistle stop account of our first networking event. A huge thank you to everyone who joined us at our first event. If you did attend we’d love to hear your feedback so please drop us a comment below.

If you missed it be sure to join us next time. Our next event is Menopause at Work - Leading Positive Change, taking place on Wednesday 30th March 2022, and you can reserve your place here.

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