Vodafone Qatar marked International Women’s Day with a series of events and activities designed to celebrate, encourage and support women in the workplace.
Every year, on March 8, the world joins hands to support, raise, inspire and motivate women across all fields of work.
Vodafone Qatar hosted an open day at Four Seasons Hotel Doha for women in Qatar and the company’s female employees, in order to promote its ReConnect programme that aims to bring talented women back into the workplace after a career break, it said in a press statement.
The all-day event focused on building women’s confidence to help them re-enter the workplace, with several guest speakers, including Aysha al-Mudahka, CEO of Qatar Business Incubation Centre; Susie Billings, head of Qatar Professional Women’s Network; and Najat al-Mahdy, an HR professional who spoke about recruitment tools.
In 2017, Vodafone created the ReConnect programme to attract talented women who have left the workplace for several years, in most cases to raise a family, and who would like to return to work on a full-time or flexible basis, but are struggling to make the professional connections needed or refresh the skills required.
This Vodafone global initiative will increase the number of women in management roles, with around 10% of all Vodafone external management hires worldwide recruited through the programme over next three years. The programme will complement other Vodafone global initiatives focused on encouraging and supporting women in the workplace including the company’s global maternity policy announced in March 2015.
Recent economic research by KPMG for Vodafone found there were an estimated 96mn skilled women aged 30-54 years on career breaks worldwide, and an estimated 55mn of them have experience at the middle-manager level and above. According to the KPMG research, programmes like this will not simply provide access to an untapped talent pool of highly experienced people, but could provide economic benefits.
Vodafone marking Women’s Day.
