Insights

International Women's Day 2020: Our Events & Activities

International Women's Day 2020: Our Events & Activities

On Sunday, the world celebrated International Women’s Day 2020. IWD not only celebrates the achievements of women across the world and the progress being made in terms of improving equality and women’s rights, but also acknowledges the work that still needs to be done for men and women to be completely equal. EMEA Recruitment strive to be at the forefront of this battle for equality, and in our third and final article relating to this year’s IWD, we will summarise the many events and activities EMEA Recruitment have carried out during the past 12 months to support the movement for true equality between men and women. 

Equality & Inclusion Event with Heineken

In May 2019, EMEA, partnered with Heineken and PAiE (Professional Accountants in Europe), hosted the ‘Equality and inclusion in Finance’ on the top floor of the Heineken Experience building in Amsterdam. At the event, CFO of Heineken and Member of the Executive Board, Laurence Debroux, delivered an engaging presentation around the approach and steps that Heineken are taking towards equality and her own experiences of climbing to success in finance. Furthermore, we heard from Susannah Rodgers MBE, British Paralympic swimmer, who is also Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum. Susie gave us an insight into the determination of an athlete and the transferable performance tools that she finds useful.

Finally, Shana Laurie de Hernandez, Partner and Retail & Consumer Leader for PwC Europe, told us about the Equal Salary certification which is now offered and PwC’s approach to pay fairness. Shana then also lead a group discussion, encouraging attendees to discuss amongst themselves the key attributes are that an inclusive leader should have. Elements such as openness, flexibility, recognition and transparency were discussed as being key.

Equality in Business - Best Practice in Diversity & Inclusion

In September, we joined EF Education First to deliver the 'Equality in Business - Best Practice in Diversity & Inclusion’ event in Zurich, attended by contacts from our network of mid to senior management professionals across Finance, BI & Data, HR, Procurement, Supply Chain and Operations. At this event, we saw talks from Liz Johnson, the British Paralympian gold medalist, Head of Global Diversity & Inclusion at ABB, Alkistis Petropaki, General Manager of Advance, Gender Equality in Business and Marc Secretan, Partner and Inclusion and Diversity Leader at PwC Switzerland.

The large number of attendees was representative of the level of interest in equality and diversity as a topic and discussion, both during the event and throughout networking afterwards, was thought-provoking and heart-felt. We believe that all attendees were able to take something away from this event, from both from the breadth of presentation content and the personal interactions with one another.

Empowerment through Diversity & Inclusion - co-hosted with Stryker

”You don't need to find your voice, you already have it, you need to learn to trust it”

In late November, EMEA Recruitment and Stryker Women’s Network hosted the ‘Empowerment through Diversity & Inclusion’ event at Stryker’s European offices in Amsterdam. At this event, we witnessed some wonderfully inspiring speeches from Shana Laurie de Hernandez, Robert Abbott, Melissa Muirhead and Liz Tunley, followed by an opportunity to network and have further discussion afterwards.

Additionally, introductions were delivered by Stefanie Hillen and our co-founder Paul Toms, who outlined the great intentions which people who are passionate about equality and diversity have,  but also encouraged people to take action now to truly make a change. In other words, good intentions can not change anything if nobody acts upon them.

She Matters 'Empower With Diverse Talent' Event in London  

Our Final and most recent event to be covered in this article is the She Matters ‘Empower with Diverse Talent’ event. This event was the focus of our IWD related article on Thursday, which can be read here, but we’ll provide a summary below.

She Matters is a social enterprise recruitment agency with the mission to change the lives of professional female refugees, in particular engineering, architecture, business services and IT professionals, by placing them in employment. The main purpose of this event was to discuss She Matters’ launch in the UK later this year, and how organisations can get involved in this initiative.

At the event, co-hosted by EMEA, Mercer and Strategic Dimensions in London, She Matters’ inspirational CEO, Christina Moreno explained how many of their candidates are refugees from war-torn and challenged countries, who are now in the Netherlands looking for meaningful employment and She Matters takes them through an educational mentorship programme which helps them to adapt to working in the Dutch workplace. We look forward with great excitement to continue our support for this important organisation, and we shall be hosting another event with She Matters later this year in Amsterdam.

What is next?

The last 12 months have been fantastic for EMEA Recruitment; our work with some of the most reputable organisations in the world to hold events such as those outlined above, all with the aim of improving equality and making the workplace a more just and equal place for everyone has been something we are extremely proud of. Moving forward, we’d like to reiterate our commitment to improving equality and we can’t wait to share with you the details of our upcoming events over the next 12 months. 

To keep up to date with our upcoming events, visit our events page here.

Want to read more? Read our previous two International Women’s Day articles, including ‘She Matters in Focus’, and our Roundtable discussion between our Managing Director, Richard Bailey,  Anna Moizo, Georgia Wright and Emma Feneley, in which they discuss their thoughts and experiences with regards to attitudes towards women in the workplace.

From everyone at EMEA Recruitment, we hope you had a very happy International Women’s Day, and we hope to see you at one of our events soon!

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Insights from our Talent Acquisition Roundtable in Zurich

Insights from our Talent Acquisition Roundtable in Zurich

On June 15th 2023, Keely Straw and Cameron Davies held EMEA Recruitment's first Talent Acquisition Roundtable in Switzerland. Keely shares insights into the event below...

The focus was to bring together senior Talent and Recruitment professionals to discuss relevant topics. We had identified that there aren’t many events focused on Talent and Recruitment specifically from a networking perspective.

The event topic was Breaking Barriers: Unveiling Unconscious Bias in Talent Acquisition. In partnership with Swiss Marketplace Group, Oerlikon, we were joined by Talent and Recruitment professionals from companies such as Syngenta, ABB, Takeda, Lonza, Glencore and Julius Baer, to name a few.

The roundtable began with an engaging introduction from Tshidi Khunou at Swiss Marketplace Group and Madlaina Brogt at Lonza, both emphasising the importance of recognising and challenging our unconscious biases, particularly in the context of Talent Acquisition. Their insights set the stage for subsequent discussions and debates - how can we influence hiring managers?

Throughout the event, participants had the opportunity to reflect on their own companies’ biases and gain a deeper understanding of how these biases can influence decision making within the recruitment and selection processes.

We explored a range of topics, including application processes, interview structures, Diversity & Inclusion efforts, influencing hiring managers and ATS/HRIS systems. This brought us nicely onto the topic of AI and how that will impact selection processes moving forwards.

The structure of the event allowed us to have a true discussion, with respectful debates and questions; we truly delved deeper into practical strategies and best practises for unconscious bias within Talent Acquisition.

One highlight of the roundtable was assessing applications and selection processes and the role that plays with unconscious bias, whether it be language capabilities, industry experience, age, or gender. There were some interesting concepts on how to utilise automation scoring techniques for candidates’ applications, which are then forwarded to the designated recruiter to follow up with a screening interview. It was a very interesting process, which provoked a debate on whether that would improve unconscious bias or have a negative impact.

The event concluded with a collective agreement that we could discuss unconscious bias for a lot longer, and that we may need another event to continue the topic. Following feedback from the attendees and local market, we will be focusing our next event on AI - positives, negatives, and whether we should embrace AI within our recruitment processes.

The next Talent Acquisition Roundtable will be held in October. If you are interested in attending, please email me directly at [email protected]

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