In this episode, Rachael talks to Caroline Arnold, an executive coach and one of EW Group’s team of diversity and inclusion specialists, about how coaching can help individuals and how it fits into the broader organisational picture.

More organisations are recognising the importance of offering coaching and mentoring to its employees to help create progression pathways into senior positions which work for men and women equally.

For example, PwC recently announced it will begin assigning mentors – usually partners – to help female and ethnic minorities employees access career-defining opportunities and help tackle its gender pay gap.

Caroline’s interest in coaching, especially women, stems for her own personal experiences in forging her career path and background in HR which showed her that women compared to men didn’t always feel able to negotiate their own salary and benefit packages.

Learn how you can power up your career with coaching.

Connect with Caroline on LinkedIn.

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 In Episode 17, Rachael is joined by a good friend of EW Group, Ruth Cooper-Dickson, to discuss how to remove the fear of saying no. Ruth also shares her practical tips on how to create more time for yourself despite having a hectic work schedule.

 Ruth is our partner for all Mental Health England accredited programmes and a well respected specialist in the field of mental health and wellbeing. She is also the founder of Champs Consultancy and a patron of the national anxiety charity, No Panic. 

We’re all creatures of (bad) habits. Hear more about our 5-point plan for wellbeing and making more time for you!

1. Creating space for yourself through morning routines

2. Establishing work boundaries

3. Having ceremonies or routines

4. Setting the pace of your day

5. Building on your strengths

 For more on the Miracle Morning, click here.

Connect with Ruth on Twitter or Instagram.

You're listening to Reworked, the EW Group podcast on workplace culture.

 For more on EW Group and the work we do to build inclusive cultures, follow us on Twitter.

In episode 16 of Reworked, Rachael Wilson talks to the Gilane Tawadros, Chief Executive at DACS, a not-for-profit visual artists’ rights management organisation.

DACS was set up by artists for artists to help transform the financial landscape for visual artists, campaign for artists’ rights and champion their sustained and vital contribution to the creative economy.

Yet, sometimes it is easy to lose sight of your organisation’s core purpose. Gilane talks about the importance of DACS rediscovering its purpose and reconnecting with the people it is meant to serve: to support artists’ work and their ability to produce their artwork sustainably. Without having this deep understanding of artists’ needs and what these needs will be in the future at the heart of the organisation, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain relevant.

Cultural change does not happen overnight. Rachael and Gilane discuss the steps DACS took to implement a cultural change to help reconnect with artists and embed across all levels of the organisation the mantra – does this help artists? – to help build confidence and clarify DACS core purpose to both artists and the outside world.

Connect with Gilane on Twitter.

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In episode 15 of Reworked, Rachael Wilson talks to Rob Neil OBE, Head of Project Race at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the former Chair of the Civil Service Race Forum.

Rob provides a candid insight into his experience of being a black man in the Civil Service. With over three decades of lived experience, Rob offers a refreshingly honest analysis of the experience of minority groups in the workplace. He gives real examples of how he leads on diversity, how he is equipping his cohort of race ambassadors to do the same and talks about why he is calling on senior leaders to clear the runway so that progress on race equality can be made.

Sponsored by the Permanent Secretary and Civil Service Race Champion, Richard Heaton, Project Race is a corporate initiative that supports the delivery of MoJ’s published objectives to deliver increased numbers of BAME staff at senior Civil Service level. The project facilitates honest conversations with the aim of becoming more comfortable and confident talking about race across the MoJ. Project Race is part of the Civil Service’ ambitious diversity and inclusion strategy to become the UK’s most inclusive employer by 2020.

Rob was awarded an OBE in The Queen’s 2018 New Year’s Honours list for ‘Services to Race Equality in the workplace and the community’. He was shortlisted as an Ethnicity Awards Top 8 BAME Workplace Hero in August 2018.

You're listening to Reworked, the EW Group podcast on workplace culture.

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For episode 14 of Reworked, Rachael catches up with Jim Gant and Keith Grafham, the team behind Feed Your Elephant, an exciting new start-up set to change the way people learn.

Have you ever stayed up all night cramming for an exam, only to find yourself drawing blanks the next day? That’s because our brains aren’t built to work that way.

Scientific evidence suggests that we learn much more effectively by absorbing small amounts of information over a sustained period. This is called spaced learning.

Jim has employed this science to create Feed Your Elephant, a series of applications designed to help you integrate new knowledge into your long-term memory. You can currently download the free apps to learn anything from capital cities, to the names and characteristics of wines.

However, the technology can also be used to supplement in-house training sessions. Spaced learning banishes the element of competition present in most other learning environments. It also uses the speed and accuracy at which you retain information to formulate personalised content and reminders.

Rachael talks to Jim and Keith about what the future holds for their spaced learning start-up. She learns the logistics behind the science that fuels it, and finds out how the company has already taken great leaps to boost confidence and performance in workplaces across the UK.

You're listening to Reworked, the EW Group podcast on workplace culture.

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For episode 13 of the Reworked podcast, Rachael talks to Lauren Quigley, Business Growth Lead at the Mayor of London’s official promotional agency, London and Partners.

You may have heard the phrase ‘Behind every man is a great woman’. This year, London and Partners are turning that anachronism on its head. Women don’t stand behind great men; they power great cities, and the company’s #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign is setting out to prove it.

#BehindEveryGreatCity was launched at the start of 2018. The campaign aims to support and raise the profile of the capital’s top women entrepreneurs and break down the still-significant obstacles they face on the road to success: only 8% of the UK’s women entrepreneurs secure venture capital funding, for example.

Rachael talks to Lauren about hope for the future, and discusses how London and Partners are paving the way for women in business – delving into the importance of mentors, communities, and having the confidence to challenge investors.

Connect with Lauren on Twitter.

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For episode 12 of the ReWorked podcast, Rachael is joined by Victor Olisa, former Head of Diversity and Chief Superintendent at the Metropolitan Police.

Working for the Metropolitan Police is demanding. 12-hour shifts are becoming the norm, and a recent study revealed that 53% of officers are never or only rarely able to take their full rest break entitlement.

As Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Victor was tasked with the challenge of convincing these time-pressed officers to make his cause a priority. He tells Rachael the tactics that he used to ‘sell’ diversity and inclusion to the officers, and reflects on the positive changes to working culture and community engagement that he enabled.

Under Victor’s management, the Met saw a record level of BAME candidates join its ranks, with over 4,000 BAME officers recorded in 2016.

Yet despite this success, Victor is the first to admit that there is still a long way to go. Systemic issues with stop and search, BME mentoring programmes, and stress management remain. The podcast delves into these key problem areas, and Victor offers his own informed opinion on how they can be tackled.

Connect with Victor on Twitter.

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In episode 11 of the Reworked podcast, Rachael talks to Vix Anderton, a wellbeing specialist and co-founder of The Practical Balance.

The importance of wellbeing in the modern workplace cannot be underestimated. It has been estimated that 12.5 million working days were lost in 2016-17 due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety. But for many companies, approaches to dealing with the problem have only come in the form of short-sighted, box-ticking exercises.

So how can businesses make the structural and cultural changes necessary to entrench wellbeing as a core company principle? What can be done to reduce the pressure and expectation on employees? And what are the obstacles getting in the way, and how can we best move past them?

Vix answers these questions and many more as she talks to Rachael about the benefits that can follow when a company takes practical steps to incorporate wellbeing into its DNA. She also offers some invaluable tips on the steps we can all take to focus more on our own wellbeing in everyday life.

Connect with Vix on Twitter.

You're listening to Reworked, the EW Group podcast on workplace culture.

For more on EW Group and the work we do to build inclusive cultures, follow us on Twitter.