Published on: Friday, 15 March 2024
Last updated: Friday, 15 March 2024
More than 50 women attended the event (credit: Greater Anglia)
On Friday March 8, more than fifty female members of the Greater Anglia workforce were hosted at a special event to mark International Women’s Day.
The day consisted of four interactive sessions that covered a variety of topics, including how to break into leadership roles, as well as discussions on topics that can cause issues for mental health, such as menopause and miscarriage.
The attendees, who were all from a wide variety of roles across Greater Anglia, also had the chance to try the company’s state-of-the-art driving simulators to get a taste of what it was like to be a driver.
External speakers led 30-minute sessions including Baljit Kaur on personal branding and leadership, and Fiona Skinner from The Fertility Coaching Company. Greater Anglia’s own occupational health nurse, Gabriella Antwi, created an engaging session around women’s health and menopause.
The event was also a chance for networking with staff between different departments.
Leaders from within Greater Anglia were also on hand to talk to attendees about getting involved in other departments such as engineering, and to encourage mentoring, career development, and colleague-led network groups around disability, race and culture and sexuality.
A women’s network group called ‘Up!’, aimed at being a support network and further voice for women within the company, was also relaunched.
Katy Bucknell, Greater Anglia’s HR director, said:
“We have a huge number of talented women at Greater Anglia who work at all levels within the company.
“It was great to host the day for our colleagues. It was an opportunity to share information on women’s health support that is available in the business and to give everyone a little further help in their careers, if they wanted it.
“All our speakers gave inspiring stories and created some great discussions during their sessions and were very empowering.”
At Greater Anglia, 30% of all women in the company are in management positions and latest staff polls from November 2023 show 78% of female respondents would recommend the company as a good place to work and that 75% are proud to work there.
Over the past year, Greater Anglia has partnered with female-friendly job board Work180. Work180 display and promote vacancies on its website and across social media and host career events at a number of shopping centres and job fayres.
The International Women’s Day event was held as part of Greater Anglia’s wider diversity and inclusion strategy, which is aimed at making the company a better place to work.