ARCADIS (EURONEXT: ARCAD), the international consulting and engineering company, has launched the ARCADIS Women’s Network, a grassroots initiative to help ARCADIS female employees establish successful professional relationships and share their resources, ideas, and experience. The key missions of the Women’s Network include fostering a high-performing, inclusive workforce, promoting career equality, assisting with career development, and making ARCADIS the employer of choice for talented women professionals.
The Women’s Network combines traditional networking elements (seminars, conferences) with social media initiatives like LinkedIn, Facebook, webinars and more. Monthly Women’s Network webcasts provide updates, networking information and valuable tips. One recent webcast featured excerpts from President Obama’s inaugural speech highlighting the accomplishments of women, read by Cindy Bishop, ARCADIS Recruiting Director and chair of the Women’s Network steering committee. Four ARCADIS women then shared stories about their professional growth.
As a multidisciplinary social network, the ARCADIS initiative seeks to involve the members of professional organizations for engineers, scientists, and other specialized professionals. The Women’s Network also seeks to involve Diversity associations and other local community groups.
Mentoring, the sharing of knowledge and experience, is a crucial element of the Women’s Network. The voluntary program is participant-driven and is designed to help foster career and professional development through the imparting of mentors’ insights, perspective, and specialized skills. The Women’s Network facilitates the process of matching mentors with mentees and also provides support through program guides, tip sheets, articles, and communications channels between ARCADIS female employees.
“We believe that by connecting the women of ARCADIS, we can strengthen our position as an industry leader as well as helping employees support one another through a highly active network,” Cindy Bishop said. “This network provides the opportunity for women to combine their talents and help reach our organizational and marketplace goals.”
Introduced in January, the ARCADIS Women’s Network has grown steadily and now involves more than 25% of ARCADIS female employees. The network is open to all employees of ARCADIS irrespective of gender, who join by registering online and creating a personal profile. ARCADIS keeps a registration database and plans a survey later this year to gauge participant satisfaction. With females comprising nearly 50% of new ARCADIS hires, the number of participants is likely to increase further, because the Women’s Network provides a much-needed opportunity for participate in both their own and their colleagues’ professional growth.
ARCADIS is an international company providing consultancy, engineering and management services in infrastructure, environment and buildings, to enhance mobility, sustainability and quality of life. ARCADIS develops, designs, implements, maintains and operates projects for companies and governments. With more than 14,000 employees and more than $2 billion in gross revenue, the company has an extensive international network that is supported by strong local market positions.
