For International Women’s Day, our DE&I group, IMA-HOME &Me, hosted a panel discussion at our Leeds HQ, which was streamed to our global offices.

Our brilliant panellists, Polly Sands, Nina Aggarwal, Hannah Moore and Natalia Sketchley, spoke all about their version of success and their journey to achieving it. Thank you for being so honest and open with us, it was a really inspiring event.

Inclusivity has many prongs to it – such as ensuring women and girls have their basic needs met. This includes ensuring that they, and people who menstruate, have access to menstrual products. We have free menstrual products available in our offices, and throughout March we are driving menstrual product donations for our chosen charity partner, Leeds North and West Food Bank.

Empowering and supporting women isn’t just something we’re thinking about this week. We wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the work we’ve been doing year-round for women at IMA-HOME.

• Last year we announced that we were one of the first companies to be involved with Careers After Babies, an organisation that was set up to create a world-class cohort of employers who are committed to supporting working parents through their transformative accreditation. An accreditation we were proud to have acquired in September 2023. We continue to support working mothers with initiatives like our parents and carers coffee mornings.

• We also developed our own Maternity Playbook, taking inspiration from Bloom North (a professional network of women in the communications sector committed to uniting the voices and the opportunities that make change possible). Our Maternity Playbook maps out exactly what the mothers can expect to happen pre, during and post maternity leave, so there’s one less thing to worry about.

• We educated ourselves on the Menopause, and what this means for women in the workplace. To mark Menopause Awareness Month in October, we hosted a menopause talk with an external expert, all centred around creating positive conversations around menopause. With the team’s learnings, we then developed our Menopause Playbook, outlining the ways in which we can support people during this time. Menopause is not just a women’s issue, so we’ve also hosted two Menopause Cafés, welcoming anyone and everyone to join, share stories, ask questions and learn in a safe and supportive environment. Feedback via evaluation forms from this event confirmed that people welcomed the opportunity where they felt able to open up and talk about their own experiences.

• As part of our flexible working policy, we also offer life moments. These are the acknowledgment of important moments that crop up in life. Moments that aren’t specific to women, but often helpful for working mums. Such as your child’s first day at school, sports day or collecting the keys for a new house. If you need to flex your usual working hours or swap a working day to allow you to make these moments, you can.