As Featured In
Do you need to close your gender pay gap?
Could you do with strengthening your female talent pipeline?
Is there a lack of women in the management tier of your organisation?
Would you like to create a more inclusive company culture for professional parents?
THe balance hub supportS working mothers and fathers
to feel confident, competent and included
We work with clients on a quarterly to annual basis to reduce the gender pay gap, to bolster the number of professional women at executive level, to stem the female brain drain and to foster a more supportive, flexible working environment.
Why?
Because not supporting parenthood is bad for business: 1 in 5 working parents deliberately stalls or downshifts their careers and reduces earnings in order to protect time spent with family and around 1 in 10 either refuse a new job or reject a promotion because of the limited work/life balance opportunities it offers. With 13 million working parents in UK, this represents a considerable downgrade in output.
How?
We take a two-tiered approach: first, implementing effective practises to attract, retain and engage professional parents and next, fostering the inclusive company culture needed to sustain these.
it's all about a balanced workforce (diverse age, gender and ethnicity)
and a balanced approach to work, life and parenting
“As part of our ongoing staff training and development programme, I organised and attended a short (one-hour) introductory workshop with Lavinia for 10 colleagues during which explored how to build on our inclusive company culture, with an emphasis on gender equality. The workshop was insightful, enjoyable, fast-paced and took us out of our comfort zones. It had the practical impact of us co-creating an action list of inclusivity ideas to further develop our team’s commitment to an inclusive company culture.”
Women returners are a key part of our strategy
both in terms of talent acquisition and engagement
Because research shows that tapping into this demographic - by increasing returner and retention rates – has the potential to generate additional, annual earnings of £1.1 billion and additional economic output of £1.7 billion.
Every year, a huge number well-qualified parents leave the workforce in order to take up care-giving responsibilities. Since replacing staff costs an average of £30,000 per person and 76% of women on parental leave want to return to work, it makes sense to nurture this talent pool and implement effective and sustainable onboarding programmes to keep them in the workforce.
But a barrier to returning is the lack of confidence and professional self-belief that extended professional leave can create. Mothers and fathers can feel they lack the necessary tools to successfully manage the new and sometimes competing demands on their time and efficiency that parenting often brings.
93% of women say that it is hard to combine a successful
career with caring responsibilities; 37% of returners feel
so isolated and unsupported that they want to leave
Add to this presenteeism, long working hours, high billing targets, not feeling part of the team and unsupportive line managers, and returning to work can seem incompatible with raising a family. Either they sacrifice their career aspirations altogether or, if they do return, the conflicting demands on their time and energy can lead to unhappiness, disengagement and low productivity.
Attracting, retaining, and engaging returners is therefore an essential component in creating a diverse workforce. Which in turn:
attracts a wider talent pool
promotes creativity and innovation
appeals to a wider customer base
the balance hub supports you to future proof your organisation
For employees to feel engaged, valued and useful enough to remain in work they need to feel part of an inclusive and supportive company culture which respects their unique contributions and authentic leadership style.
Research states that organisations today are being rated more on their employee Value Proposition and approach to work/life than on their salary offering.
Couple this with the current age of disruption, VUCA and the 100-year life, and career breaks and pivots will become more commonplace.
Rethinking the current business model with regards to parental returners, will therefore have a much wider potential application to the entire workforce.
We not only provide your organisation with the emotional, practical and intellectual tools for working parents to thrive but we also ensure that your policies are put into practise. So that an inclusive and diverse company culture becomes a lived experience and your organisation becomes an employer of choice.
“Lavinia ran one of the modules on the 2019 Backb2businessship Marketing Returners programme match funded by the Government’s Women Returners office. She is a breath of fresh air - a free spirit who encourages returning mums to find that ‘quiet and safe space’ to reflect on what they want out of their careers and their lives beyond being a parent, a partner and a provider. Full of tips and relevant case studies, she challenges her audience to really think beyond their present reality, confronting head on the challenges of running a career and a family as well as what being ‘good enough’ at both actually means to each individual. Book her now.”