Twice as capable, twice as resilient, twice as determined

Time: 11.00 - 12.00

Twice as capable, twice as resilient, twice as determined
Women in estates: Experiences, barriers, and the talent pipeline to senior positions

This session is being run as part of AUDE’s follow-up activity to the publication of the AUDE report ‘Well the assumption is…: Conversations with women leaders in estates and facilities’, which looked at some of the experiences of women working in HE estates and the barriers to career progression that they face.
The report identifies six themes. These are...

• The invisibility of the career path, and female confidence in walking it
• Casual sexism as an aspect of slow cultural change
• Health, including maternity and menopause
• The weight of expectation
• The talent pipeline
• Men as allies, men as obstacles.

This session introduces the report to the AUDE membership, examines some of the barriers that women in estates face in managing successful career trajectories, and asks colleagues male and female to reflect on what they can do to act as allies across the whole scope of EDI. We would recommend a reading of the report ahead of this session. The session is for both women and men, and our panel will bring a range of perspectives to the content of the report.

The session will be facilitated by AUDE Executive Director Jane Harrison-White.

Panel speakers
Former AUDE Chair and our current EDI lead Stephen Wells of the University of East Anglia will introduce the report, and speak about the association’s work on EDI and our plans for the future.

Paul Boustead of Phoenix OD and HR Consulting has been named as one of the 20 most influential people working in HR today. His perspective is as a former Higher Education HR Director having worked at Lancaster, Leeds and the Open University. What is stopping women getting into the talent pipeline and forging strong estates careers, and how do we break down those barriers?

Ben Duffill is Managing Director of MRG Global, one of the leading specialist recruitment agencies in estates and facilities. That perspective means he is ideally placed to point to the key things every candidate in estates roles needs to do to get on, including ways that female candidates can frame their skills and experience to land successfully with recruiting managers.

Andrea Pennock is Director of Estates at the University of Aberystwyth and a participant in the report. What does the report tell us about what needs to change? How can women harness male support to make an estates and facilities career more viable for more women to pursue?

Helen Scott is the Executive Director of Universities Human Resources (UHR), AUDE’s sister organisation with a membership of Higher Education HR professionals. What is the view from the HR teams on the issues raised by the report? How can estates and HR teams work together, even during extremely tough and busy times, to further these issues? What examples of good practice in HE are available for us all to learn from – around issues like family-friendly policies, recruitment practices or return-to-work processes?