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OU in Wales wins Womenspire 2022 employer award

OU in Wales director Louise Casella accepts the Womenspire award

On Thursday 29 September, The Open University in Wales was announced as the winner of the FairPlay Employer award at Womenspire 2022.

The annual ceremony is organised by Chwarae Teg and recognises the achievements of women across Wales – both in work and their personal lives. The ceremony took place in Cardiff Bay’s Pierhead, and was live-streamed to viewers at home. This is the second time in three years that the OU in Wales has won the award.

Sponsored by Hodge Bank, the FairPlay Employer award recognises organisations working towards gender equality within their workplaces. When declaring The Open University in Wales as this year’s winner, the judges said ‘The organisation is inclusive, innovative and responsive with a commitment to equality and equity embedded in all it does'.

We’ve continued to promote our mentoring programme to staff. And that’s not a one-way programme of established staff supporting those developing in their careers; it’s a programme that includes reverse mentoring – listening to and learning from the lived experience of others. This has hugely enriched the thinking of our managers and leaders, and helped nurture talent in all parts of the organisation.

Louise Casella
Director, The Open University in Wales

'Winning the FairPlay Employer Award is fantastic recognition of the sustained and systematic effort we have dedicated to creating an inclusive workplace with equity and fairness as core values,' added Louise Casella, Director of The Open University in Wales. 'Over the past few years our staff body has grown alongside our student numbers across Wales, and like everyone else we’ve been adapting to changed ways of working. While many of those changes were originally enforced by the pandemic, we’ve been keen to learn from our experiences, have embraced greater flexibility in how and where people work but have also recognised some of the challenges that come with that more distributed and distant form of working.

'So we’ve been making sure that people feel supported and connected in their roles through multiple initiatives like our Curious Coffees where people can connect one to one with anyone else in the organisation, or our All Staff Huddles where the whole team can some together and share learning. We’ve also adapted all our recruitment and onboarding practices to ensure they are as inclusive as possible, and listened to our staff about what they need and how we best support them.

'Alongside this, we’ve continued to promote our mentoring programme to staff. And that’s not a one-way programme of established staff supporting those developing in their careers; it’s a programme that includes reverse mentoring – listening to and learning from the lived experience of others. This has hugely enriched the thinking of our managers and leaders, and helped nurture talent in all parts of the organisation.'

 As well as winning the employer award, The Open University in Wales was also the sponsor of the Learner category, an award celebrating the amazing achievements of women who have changed their lives through learning.

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