Vodafone Romania further diversifies its Human Resources (HR) programs for women and launches three new initiatives, Girls Up, Lean in Circles, Digital Aplhas, designed to support woman employees in developing both their personal and professional life. Fragiski Melissa (photo), HR Director of Vodafone Romania, said: “We have a strong commitment to diversity and women’s empowerment. We believe that our new initiatives for women will contribute to a higher gender parity and further strengthen our company over time. We have been recognised as a top employer in our industry, which encourages us and confirms that we are on the right path. Our long-term ambition is to become the world’s best employer for women over the next 10 years and we believe that by continuing to invest in new global and local programs for women, we will achieve that.”
They address to women of all ages, from all the company’s functions and represent a new step for further consolidating women’s presence and role within Vodafone. At present, women represent almost 58% of about 3,000 employees working with Vodafone Romania and hold more than 47% of management positions.
Girls Up is a 6-month program addressed to women between 18 – 26 years of age from all functions within the company. It is designed to offer the opportunity for the young employees to grow personally and professionally by exchanging thoughts, knowledge and experiences. It consists of a mix of facilitated sessions for assessing personal strengths and unknown barriers, aimed at boosting their self-confidence, learning sessions for discovering other Vodafone functions and the way they interact with each other and an internal mentoring program with people from the senior management.
The second one, Lean in Circles , is a tailor-made peer to peer mentoring program. It is inspired, designed and based on the “lean in” global initiative that encourages women to pursue their ambitions and shifts the conversation from what a person cannot do to what they can do. Organized on 6-month sessions and structured on monthly meetings, the program empowers soft skills, by supporting each person at her own pace and approaches topics such as strengths & unrealized strengths, personal branding, work-life balance and adaptability.
Digital Aplhas is the third program, designed to encourage and inspire ambitious Vodafone women to launch and strengthen careers in the digital field. Under this concept, existing women digital leaders promote digital literacy and mentor those wanting to pursue such a career. Women from Vodafone digital teams, as well as talents enrolled in Vodafone’s management trainee program, Discover, share their knowledge to other colleagues. It is organised on two pillars planned for a period of 12 months: an upskilling section comprising training, networking sessions and external events and the second part structured on digital sessions hosted by women employees, as a series of drop-in courses in computer programming, agile ways of working, IoT, digital marketing and other related topics.
The three new initiatives represent a continuation of the HR programs addressed to women, which have already been launched in the last two years in Vodafone Romania. The company launched locally the Vodafone Group program ReConnect, designed to attract talented women who have left a workplace for several years, irrespective of their previous industry. Girls in STEM, provides girls aged between 14-18 a unique learning experience and encourages them to follow a career in a technical field. Connected She Can, a leadership development program designed for top talent female leaders, helps them accelerate their development within Vodafone by providing support that includes highly personalised coaching sessions. Vodafone Romania also started Women in Red Awards series, which celebrates achievements of inspiring women, gives them a platform for recognizing their contribution within the company and the inspiration they offer to their colleagues. Another program implemented is Women in Technology, which celebrates amazing success stories of women from the technology teams, during International Women’s Week event.
The company has also launched on March 5 a new HR policy, as part of a global initiative aimed at providing specific support to victims of domestic violence and abuse. According to the new policy, employees will have access to support and specialist counselling, as well as up to 10 days additional paid leave, called “safe leave” and three salaries paid in advance for legal and administrative issues.
Vodafone Romania is a subsidiary of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone Group has mobile operations in 25 countries, partners with mobile networks in 42 more, and fixed broadband operations in 19 markets. As of 31 December 2018, Vodafone Group had approximately 700 million mobile customers and 21 million fixed broadband customers, including all of the customers in Vodafone’s joint ventures and associates.
