It’s International Women’s Day (IWD) and this years’ theme is Choose to Challenge.
Choose to Challenge is a great theme, encouraging everyone to challenge the way they think and act. For me, it’s a reminder that we should be challenging ourselves to do this every day, not just today. That’s the only way we’ll defeat gender biases and inequalities.
Whether it’s a sexist/derogatory comment, assumptions based on someone’s gender, or conscious and unconscious bias because of someone’s gender; we must always choose to challenge.
That’s my opinion as Talent Acquisition & Insights Manager at Charlton Morris. However, we wanted to ask everyone else how they feel about gender equality: why do they think it’s important to choose to challenge? So, we posed this question to everyone in the business. You can hear the responses in the video above.
At Charlton Morris we want to create a diverse and inclusive business, where women enjoy working and are provided equal opportunity.
In 2020, we formed the Charlton Morris Diversity & Inclusion team, which is made up of individuals that are passionate about initiatives about gender equality and improving Charlton Morris. The Diversity & Inclusion team’s meetings are solutions focused and a place where ideas are shared.
We have so many fantastic female recruitment consultants within the business but know that more can be done to increase these numbers. This is something we’re actively addressing.
For example, we’re working with the Women in Leadership Society at Leeds University to spread awareness about the opportunities for women in recruitment. By helping run and participating in society events, we’re able to reach more young women and tell them about what others have already achieved in the industry.
While it’s important to get more women into the industry, we also understand that its equally important to support the women that already working within recruitment. That’s why we’ve partnered with Women in Recruitment, which is an organisation that helps us develop our female recruiters and keep them in the industry (as well as attract more talented women to Charlton Morris).
Women in Recruitment also offers a mentoring scheme which many of our female consultants have got involved with, so that they can be mentored by a woman in recruitment from a different organisation. This support has already helped our female consultants learn and grow so much.
We’re hoping that these changes can make a big difference to how women feel about working at Charlton Morris. We will continue to listen to our Diversity and Inclusion team, as well as any individual that wants to talk to us about making the Charlton Morris working environment more open, equal and fair.
We also want to learn from our peers across the business community, which means you! If you have any suggestions as to how we can continue to build on the progress we’ve made, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or contact me directly at Chloe.Robinson@charltonmorris.com.
