We believe in fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone has equal opportunities to grow and thrive. Our Female Career Accelerator Development Programme aims to empower and equip those identifying as women with the necessary skills, knowledge and support to excel in their careers and break through any glass ceilings.

Following the success of our first intake of colleagues onto the programme, which was shortlisted for Best Career Development Initiative at last year’s Women in Housing Awards, in summer 2023 we once again invited female colleagues to apply to join the second year’s intake. The three month programme run by AllBright consists of career coaching sessions, weekly activities, videos, networking and access to an online platform of e-learning.

Leadership and OD manager Steph Foster said: “We had such great feedback from the colleagues that attended the course in the first year around how it’s benefitted their personal growth as well as the confidence to progress their careers and wanted to continue to provide this opportunity to colleagues. We’re not aware of any other housing associations that are doing anything like this, that is focused on giving colleagues the chance to learn from people outside of the housing sector and build relationships with them.

“These sort of programmes help create a talented pipeline of women ready to move into more senior leadership roles or subject matter expert roles. This helps us become a more sustainable organisation and help us further reduce our gender pay gap. We reinvested the savings we generated on our sustainability linked loans to support six additional places in our second year.”

Sixteen colleagues were selected to take part in this year’s programme and when the first cohort logged into their first virtual class of the programme in the autumn service delivery graduate Sukhy Bains was among them.

“It was a great opportunity to see what other people are doing in other organisations and learn from their experiences,” said Sukhy. “When you go on a training course it’s usually focused on what you’re currently doing, but this was all about looking forward and helping you prepare to take the next step. I felt quite sad when it came to an end, because it was so interesting learning from other women and hearing the challenges they were facing in their roles. It’s really helped to shape my mindset around my career; it’s made it clear that anything is possible and that you own your career and that applies to everyone.”

Housing enabler Fay Rubisch added: “Everyone was from different backgrounds and companies but you could easily relate to other people’s experiences. But it was also reassuring that I haven’t experienced some of the issues that others had because Bromford has a learning and development programme that allows us to go on courses like this, has a great range of benefits and has supportive managers, like I do.”

Head of new funding Rachel Hurst said: “We continue to see the benefits of sustainability linked loans which give greater visibility, transparency and accountability to key metrics within the organisation. We now have a total of eight sustainability KPIs across six loans and we are committed to reinvesting any savings generated into initiatives that empower our colleagues and customers to thrive. As one of these initiatives, we are pleased to have supported six additional female colleagues in their career journeys to create a more diverse pipeline of senior talent.”

Running initiatives like this has helped us to reduce our gender pay gap from 7.2% two years ago to 3.8%, which is a KPI we have linked to one of our revolving credit facilities. The savings we have made from meeting the targets of our sustainability linked loans helped finance this year’s intake of colleagues onto the programme.