Women’s health has been in the news recently, with World Menopause Day marked earlier in October. We caught up with the new Chair of the Elysium Women’s Employee Resource Group, Sophie Stuart, to tell us more about the group’s plans for the future.
“Myself and Cashana Bull, the Co-Chair of the Women’s ERG, are new into posts within the group and we both joined at around the same time. As Chair, I’m pushing myself out of my comfort zone, but that is a very good reason to do it!
“We wanted to work with the group to really elevate the levels of engagement. We’ve revisited our mission statement, tagline, aims and objectives. Our new mission statement is ‘Empowering women to connect, grow, and lead — building an inclusive culture where every woman is seen, supported, and inspired to thrive.’
“Our new tagline is ‘Connected. Empowered. Inspired’. We’re currently working on our aims and objectives. We want it to be very collaborative, we are a group – we need to make decisions together and move the group forward.
“We’d love to encourage more members to join the group. Such a large proportion of our colleague group – the vast majority – are women. The ERG has already achieved great things, for example, it played an integral role in the creation and rollout of the menopause policy. However, there is so much more we need women to share their voices and views on.
“While it’s so important to influence and be involved in policy, the Elysium Women’s Employee Resource Group is not just about writing policies – we want to be a resource centre for women, women’s health and everything that can help us grow as individuals. So, the creation of a resource hub will likely be one of our main objectives.
“As a group, we want to be about celebrating any achievements of women across the organisation. We want to mark specific relevant days and really create a supportive network of women.
“It is so important to draw on each other’s experiences and knowledge. When I reflect on my personal life, I’m lucky to say I have a good support network outside of work. However, that’s not the case for some people. As an organisation, we need a safe space where people can connect and feel supported. We spend the majority of our time at work – it’s key that people can find places of support while they are there.”