Work will continue in 2025 to promote the CSO as an employer of choice and highlight our family friendly and flexible working arrangements, inclusive culture, mentorship, coaching and leadership programmes for all. We plan to increase our reach across social media platforms and professional networks to ensure that we reach a diverse talent pool which will support the gender balance in the recruitment and promotion process.
It is intended to expand CSO’s mentoring and coaching collaborations with other organisations in 2025. The CSO will continue to invest in coaching and mentoring as a valuable support to help females in their career advancement.
The CSO will continue to review our recruitment & selection processes with a gender lens to ensure that there are no inadvertent barriers to female participation and successful progression in both our open and internal recruitment campaigns. Additional focus will be on developing diversity data and metrics to monitor our processes.
The CSO will be launching a new People Strategy in Q1 2025 and a central tenet of this strategy will be fostering a great place to work where all our staff can reach their full potential. The CSO will also be publishing EDI and L&D strategies which will complement and support the delivery of the People Strategy.
In 2025, our Learning & Development (L&D) team is planning to create and host a development event to empower women in leadership. This initiative will focus on fostering skills, confidence and connections for aspiring and established female leaders in the CSO.
The CSO will continue to deliver an ambitious programme of EDI and Well-being events and activities in 2025. EDI training will continue to be a mandatory module in CSO’s Smart Start Year 1 training programme for all new staff and newly promoted staff. In-person EDI induction will also continue to be delivered as part of the overall CSO Induction Programme.
The CSO recognises that people managers or line managers play an important role in implementing HR policies and ‘bringing them to life’. In 2025 there will be a focus on providing more support to people managers and to help them foster an inclusive working environment that allows staff to flourish.
In 2025 the CSO will explore and offer more personalised and flexible learning opportunities for staff to reach their full potential. Also, continue to monitor female participation rates in various learning interventions to identify any barriers to participation.