Next Saturday, 8th March, is International Women’s Day. This global campaign is a brilliant way to celebrate all our colleagues-women for their achievements and successes and male colleagues for their role in championing and supporting them plus mothers, sisters, wives and daughters – reminds Winterflood’s Rebekah Coughlan. In the following blog, Beky shares her personal story with us as she reflects on the importance of building greater diversity within financial services – and highlights some practical ways we could go about such change .
IWD is a good day to thank our colleagues who tirelessly engage in different ways across the company and wider group to improve diversity and inclusion and raise awareness of challenges and hurdles different groups face to the fore.
The board, and senior managers at Winterflood remain particularly mindful as we continue to see fewer female to male candidates apply for our front office entry level schemes. Sadly, we also see smaller numbers of women stay in these positions for the duration of their career for a variety of reasons and this is something that we continue to explore and address.
Not a new statement by any means, but championing for equality really does start at home, alongside societal change. I remember, a number of years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, some family and friends being slightly put out that as the “breadwinner” in my household, I would be returning to work after six months on a 0.8 FTE basis. Again, after my second, when my ex-husband stayed at home as the cost of childcare was prohibitive and he wanted to reflect on his next role, that decision was similarly frowned upon. And that was despite the decision being right for us as a family and for my career at the time. Interestingly, he didn’t feel he received the same equal treatment when it came to invites to mothers’ rather than parents’ groups.
I’m glad that with the introduction and promotion of Shared Parental Leave & Pay and a visual change in respect of shared parenting at the school gates, that we are now moving towards a much more inclusive environment. As a society we really should be championing parity for parenting and the arrangement that suits each unique family best.
A second area we need to improve on is career advice within schools. Again, reflecting on my experience attending a grammar in Kent prior to choosing my career path, I remember that the careers promoted more commonly, were those in academia. In fact, I did consider becoming a biology teacher, before completing a forensic degree and starting my first postgraduate role as an executive assistant. I don’t believe, careers in finance were as widely discussed or understood, unless you had family or friends working in that industry to provide exposure or a route in.
Ultimately, if our family and friends aren’t championing equality and schools aren’t providing wide enough career advice – covering all industries and developing roles and skills – how are we going to attract diverse candidates to the company or the industry as a whole?
I’m proud to say that Winterflood is aligned with its parent company, Close Brothers Group, in its commitment to Diversity and Inclusion, engaging in all the groupwide networks, who are sponsored by senior executives. One of the more recent groups established focuses on social mobility – highlighting the disproportionate amount of people from lower social economic backgrounds that enter and build a career in financial services. The Social Mobility Network had key objectives of ‘get in’ and ‘get on’. The focus being how to break down the barriers for people coming into the industry, and for those that do make it in, how to ensure they benefit from opportunities to grow their careers.
Given the persistent scarcity of women in financial services, the network decided to take their messaging directly to a girls’ school in north London in January with interactive sessions delivered to 180 students. It’s important for firms to engage in tangible actions like this to address diversity and to promote careers that are appropriate to individual student’s skills, aspirations and education.
We hope to build on initiatives such as this one. We’re hopeful that the initiative will bear fruit with more female and diverse candidates applying for and completing our entry level programmes. Schemes like this ensure students have a better understanding of financial services, and a realistic view of the career opportunities available. I truly believe this is one of the ways that progress can be made.
About Rebekah Coughlan
(Beky) is Director of HR, Marketing and Communication at Winterflood. Having joined the company in 2005, Rebekah has worked her way up to the main board and seen significant change across the industry in that time, she also sits on the Close Brothers Group HR Leadership team. She not only has the direct HR responsibilities for staff through her role but also established the diversity and inclusion committee at Winterflood and led the project to develop the Company’s vision & values in April 2016, through to the establishment of Our Way, Winterflood’s code of conduct.
