Teaming up with other organisations to help women progress their careers

The UK firm is helping to boost the confidence and career prospects of its women managers by teaming up with client organisations.

Its co-coaching initiative, the first of its kind, is aimed at helping women overcome the barriers to career development.

The initiative brings together female managers from different organisations, who get paired up and meet regularly for nine months to offer each other confidential coaching support.

Participants are given the opportunity to share experiences about work and any career or home pressures with another professional woman from a different organisation, who may have some new and different perspectives to share and good challenges to offer. It’s also an opportunity for them to support and encourage each other to develop, and to create useful business contacts and a network.

Following a successful pilot with a government organisation, co-coaching is now in its third round, involving clients such as Rolls-Royce and the National Grid.

Tina Hallett, PwC UK partner responsible for setting up the co-coaching programme says: “The initiative empowers women to do their own coaching without a mentor or professional coach to guide them or interfere. It’s about self-development, rather than forming part of a formal development programme.”

To kick-start the programme, participants attend a half-day session during which they are given input on how a successful co-coaching relationship works, choose a coaching partner and then plan how they want to work going forwards. Six months later, the group meets again to share feedback and at the end of the programme meets once more to celebrate success.