A BLOG POST BY NIAMH CORBETT, 30% CLUB STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBER Following the completion of the 30% Club cross-company mentoring pilot, we are delighted to be able to announce the roll-out of the full scheme for 2014-15. Nomura kindly hosted the launch event on their spectacular terrace overlooking the Thames, and the turn-out was testament to the 30% Club’s continued aim of reaching out to an ever greater number of organisations and women. A total of 22 organisations are signed up, including all 8 companies that took part in the pilot, and the cohort comprises 342 participants that span law, finance, retail, media and the public sector.
Complementing existing schemes in the UK market and within individual organisations, the programme will run for 9 months through to June next year and is being facilitated by an online matching system that has allowed mentees and mentors to express preferences around matching criteria including gender, work specialism and geography. Going forwards, the aim is to use the system to maximise further upscale in the programme as we look to extend internationally and offer a global scheme as of next year.
As with the pilot, the calibre of mentors participating in 2014-15 is outstanding, all being seasoned professionals with substantial business experience and holding senior leadership roles within their organisation. The 30% Club continues, as ever, to try and affect change by getting men and women to work together and of those 171 mentors taking part, 107 are men and 64 are women.
The 171 mentees taking part are all high potential women who have not yet attained seniority within their organisations and where evidence suggests there is high risk of failing to achieve the same rate of promotion as similarly-qualified men. Whilst success will always be tricky to measure, progress will be tracked through mentee benchmarking questions and mentors will be asked to provide an evaluation on programme completion; each participating organisation will also be able to generate a progress report that can be fed back internally at the end of the cohort.
The launch of the 2014-15 cohort is another step in the collective and concerted efforts on the part of many to build the pipeline of women, focusing on giving more women the advice they need to keep them in the workplace and help them progress through their careers.
We would like to extend a huge thank you to all those men and women taking part in the scheme and we wish them well on their mentoring journey!