Workshops
- How to Retain Talented Women after Maternity Leave
- Career Success for Working Mothers
- Achieving Work Life Balance
- The Seven Secrets of a Balanced Life for Exhausted Parents
- Preparing for Maternity Leave and Beyond
- Returning with confidence and ease
How to Retain Talented Women after Maternity Leave
Companies who fail to attract women back to work after childbirth face a major source of unwanted attrition and incur major costs. These costs are incurred both directly and indirectly: Directly through recruitment, training, management and administrative costs, and indirectly via factors such as loss of business knowledge and experience, damage to client relationships. This workshop explores best practice for HR and Diversity professionals who want to retain more women returning from maternity leave.
Workshop Content- What mothers say they want
- Barriers to retaining working mothers
- Exploring company-wide policies for improved retention
- Best practice in other organisations
You are an HR manager, Diversity Manager, Leader or Line Manager who wants to implement best practice in your organisation in order to attract, engage and retain the growing demographic of working mothers.
- Understand motivations for women leaving organisations
- Increase awareness of flash points for pregnant women and working mothers to facilitate their effective management on both practical and emotional levels
- Equip you with a framework to create policies and practices that benefit both the business and working mothers
Career Success for Working Mothers
Working mothers face many unique challenges. Sometimes there is just too much going on, and the demands of modern day home life and those of the business can often feel like they are colliding or about to collide with negative consequences that affect both the individual and the business. That feeling of "too much to do and not enough time to do it all" can cause a lot of underlying guilt and stress. Learning how to manage this and to regain a sense of balance is a crucial skill for working mothers to learn.
We can help individuals, who are often swamped by competing priorities, workload, and deadlines, to become more effective, work smarter, achieve balance and reduce stress. This highly participative programme looks at the ways we manage our behaviour, our emotions and ourselves and finds ways and solutions to establish a strategy for future career success.
Workshop Content- Personal Goals and Values
- Prioritizing for success
- Understanding and achieving balance
- Understanding ‘best me’ versus ‘not best me’, productive and non productive ways of being
- Identifying barriers to personal change
- Exploring strategies for future success
You are a manager, leader or executive who wants to feel more in control of your career, whilst also appreciating the need for balance in your life. You want to develop ways of effectively handling pressure and feel confident about your priorities in life.
- Improved work life balance
- Clarity about roles and goals
- Greater understanding about how you operate in the world – what works and what doesn’t
- Come away with a range of strategies for successful working as a working mother
Achieving Work Life Balance
Work Life Balance is an individual and unique goal for each individual. What looks like balance to one person may look completely different to another. The core of work life balance is about priority and choice. If people have a measure of control over how they work and their priorities feel right, they experience balance. Being “out of balance” is also a felt experience leading to stress and pressure. Research suggests that individuals these days are time poor, particularly working mothers, and demographics suggest that this trend is not going to disappear.
Workshop Content- What is being in balance?
- Developing my unique definition of balance
- Understanding my triggers that create and hinder balance
- Exploring personal goals for authentic living
- Understanding and achieving balance
- Identifying barriers to personal change
- Exploring strategies for successful work life balance
You are a manager, executive or leader who is facing a life of constant competing demands, unhealthy guilt and stressful time pressure. You want to develop ways to feel more balanced and able to use time more effectively.
Learning Objectives- Understand your definition of balance
- Identify ways to achieve balance
- Using your intuition to achieve balance
- Greater understanding about how you operate in the world – what works and what doesn’t
- Come away with a range of strategies for achieving effective work life balance
The Seven Secrets of a Balanced Life for Exhausted Parents
This workshop acknowledges the fact that there is no such thing as perfect balance for a working parent, and that, whilst balance is a unique definition for each of us, there are many common factors that prevent us from achieving a sense of balance and fulfillment in our lives. In this thought-provoking and practical workshop, delegates will come out with actions to implement and ideas to stimulate their own problem solving abilities.
Workshop Content
What is this thing called balance?
- Is there a magic formula to a balanced life?
- The myths of balance
- The one thing about balance that you need to know
- Can you “have it all?”
Knowing yourself
- Who are you?
- What makes you tick?
- Realising your uniqueness
- You and your magnificent achievements
- How to be selflessly selfish
- Defining your own version of balance
Presence and Joy
- A very short philosophy lesson on the past, present and future
- Learning to be present
- What is joy?
- How to find joy in every day, no matter what that day is like
Simplification
- Taking care of you
- Sharing the load
- Toleration zapping
Guilt and Shoulds
- De-Shoulding
- Understanding Guilt
- Anti Guilt Pills
Be Your Own Guru
- Throw out the books
- Avoiding the perfection trap
- Why good enough is good enough
- Being a “good enough” parent
Domestic Harmony
- Neglecting “us”
- A cautionary tale – the four horsemen of the apocalyptic relationship
- Simple steps to domestic harmony for exhausted couples
Workshop Delegate Profile
You are a working parent at any level who feels that life is often like a rollercoaster that you can’t get off. You work hard and after a hard day’s work you go home to more work cooking, cleaning, taxi-ing children and the general unrelenting management of a family and household. You need some time out to discover who you are amidst all the roles you play, and you need some reassurance that you are not alone. Finally, you need some practical and do-able ideas and tips on how to fine-tune your life so that you feel more balanced and fulfilled.
Learning Objectives- Explore your personal definition of balance
- Identify ways to achieve balance now without making major changes in your life
- Using your intuition to achieve balance and peace of mind
- Greater understanding about how you operate in the world – how you can be your greatest obstacle to balance
- Emerge with a range of strategies for achieving effective balance as a working parent
Preparing for Maternity Leave and Beyond
Did you know that ante natal depression is actually more common than post natal depression?
In a 2007 study in the journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, between 12 and 17% of pregnant women were found to have significant levels of anxiety and depression. Having support where she can talk through her fears and anxiety is one of the most effective ways of tackling ante-natal depression. This workshop prepares pregnant employees for the huge and often overwhelming changes surrounding motherhood. It will help those anticipating maternity leave to prepare practically and emotionally for their new role in life as a parent and as a working parent.
Workshop Content- Self awareness for change
- Extreme self-care
- Expectations versus reality
- Reassessing values and priorities
- Action plan for transition and managing change
- Seeking support
- Simplification
- Weaving a childcare net
You are an employee who is pregnant and is preparing for the birth of your child. This may be your first or subsequent child. Whilst you will attend ante-natal classes to prepare you for labour, you want to prepare yourself mentally for the challenges of becoming a parent and combining motherhood with work. You want to plan your cover over the maternity leave period to ensure that this is seamless for your clients or customers, your colleagues, your manager and yourself.
Learning Objectives- Clarity about your personal values and those of the organization
- Being authentic, living true to your values and developing a plan that can help
- Raising self awareness using a strengths based approach
- Improving personal confidence and self esteem
- Understanding your unique version of work life balance and how to manage it
Returning with confidence and ease
Anyone who can remember that “first day back at school” feeling will relate to the pressure of returning to work after having a child. Feelings of guilt (“Will my child be OK without me?”, “Am I a terrible mother?”) and wrestling with feelings of anxiety (“What will have changed?”, “Will I still be able to do it’?”) are all too common, and can cause stress for the returning mother.
In a recent survey conducted by Corporate Mothers, 69% said they felt anxious about returning to work, and 46% were less confident about their abilities than before.
It takes time and confidence for mothers to come back into the workplace. Research from Harvard shows that it typically takes fifteen months for an individual to move and become comfortable in a new role. This research was done with ‘normal’ job changers so one can imagine that the transition for mother returnees will be longer and more challenging than this.
This facilitated workshop looks at regaining confidence, setting priorities for future career aspirations and managing the ever-changing work life balance.
Workshop Content- Defining Confidence and goal setting
- Self awareness for change
- Making a confident impact
- Challenging negative thought patterns and limiting beliefs
- Challenging guilt and “shoulds”
- Reassessing values and priorities
- Action plan for transition and managing change
- Weaving a support net
You are a manager, executive or leader who is about to or has recently returned to work after a career break. You may be feeling anxious or unsure about the return to work, concerned for your family at home and for yourself in the workplace. Your values and priorities in life may have changed and you want to discover a new confidence and a new way of operating successfully in your career and at home. Note: This workshop has been successfully delivered to a mixed audience of men and women as well as a women only audience.
Learning Objectives- Clarity about your personal values
- Understanding the various roles you play and how you can combine those roles
- Being authentic, living true to your values and developing a plan that makes your life as a working mother flow more smoothly
- Raising self awareness using a strengths based approach
- Improving personal confidence and self esteem
- A strategy for dealing with barriers to confidence
- Understanding your unique version of work life balance and how to manage it
