Today the world celebrates International Women’s Day (IWD) 2022 and it’s theme; #BreaktheBias.
The IWD campaign focuses on the idea that whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day, and together we can break the bias in our communities and workplaces.
Some of the team got involved with this year’s selfie cards as we work together to #BreaktheBias.
We also caught up with Becky Hicks who works within our HR team, to find out more about why Waldeck support #BreaktheBias and how a diverse workforce drives a better working world:
“International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the achievements of women across all industries and in all environments, as well as calling out bias and inequality.
“Gender equality, and celebration across all diversities is essential for economies and communities to thrive, as well as businesses. In engineering industries it is clear that stereotypes are being challenged and a diverse representation of women is more evident, which is something we work hard to champion as a business.
“At Waldeck, equality continues to be important to us when considering aspects of the business such as recruitment, training and career progression, in order to eliminate unconscious bias and create an inclusive, empowering environment for all.
“Within STEM industries in particular there is a preconception that it is a ‘man’s world’ and the statistics support this with only 14.5% of all engineers in the UK being women. We believe education is so important to ensure that young women feel inspired to use their creativity and knowledge to build a career within STEM and is one of several reasons why we were recently involved in an all-female mentoring programme ‘Go Beyond’ with the University of Salford and have presented workshops at local all-girls schools to showcase varying career paths for women in typically male-dominated industries.
“With an above average 18% of our workforce being women, equality and diversity are an everyday learning activity at Waldeck and days like International Women’s Day only reinforce our commitment to this, raising awareness for an important cause.”
Executive Director, Chris Burke, added:
“Waldeck, as part of the wider Morson Group have already taken huge steps to influence positive behaviour and reduce bias, with compulsory Equality & Diversity training for all employees and carrying out awareness events throughout the year. That said, there is still a continuing need worldwide for more progressive mind-sets and inclusive behaviours, which we hope to be able to continue to support through our internal programmes such as apprenticeship schemes, graduate training, professional development reviews, flexible working and other internal initiatives.”
Find out more about International Women’s Day here >