Christmas Spirit and Inspiration with WICT

Did you miss our fabulous, festive, final event of 2017? Fear not… here is a round up of our Christmas Spirit and Inspiration event, including video highlights too!

We ended the year on a high. Our first inspirational guest speaker Caroline Strood (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP) discussed the Gender Pay Gap… did you know that 10th November marks the day that, in theory, women in the UK start working for free until the end of the year! This date hasn’t moved in the past three years, and reflects the mean gender pay gap for full time workers. However, thanks to new legislation, we can look forward to more open, honest conversations with companies regarding gender pay differences, as companies with 250+ employees will have to publish average pay for men and women (including any bonuses).

When you are going for a new role, Caroline advises that  you do not disclose your previous salary to your potential new employer, as if you have been underpaid in your previous position, this will exacerbate being underpaid. Whereas if you do not share this information, you are more likely to be paid for the role itself.

Our second speaker, Deloitte’s Cornelia Calugar Pop took us through the latest mobile consumer trends, including “silver surfers” on Snapchat, and a lack of productivity on mobiles in the workplace! Cornelia also discussed the rise of women in Tech – often a male-dominated industry, sharing her own experiences with us.

Our final speaker of the day was Dana Strong, president and COO of Virgin Media. Dana’s impressive career has taken her around the world, and she had some fantastic pearls of wisdom to share with us. First and foremost, we should all “think big and go for it” – there is nothing to stop us trying to smash that glass ceiling.  Throughout her career, Dana found that throwing her hat into the ring for a more senior role helped raise her profile, and ultimately opened a lot of doors for her and contributed to her success. She also shared with us the importance of failure as well as success; “failure is good, scar tissue is formative. A lot of learning has come from my failures.”

Finally, she stressed the importance of having a strong network around you…”be careful not to skip those after work cocktail parties and networking events.” With that in mind, it would have been rude not to raise a glass and toast to a wonderful year of being bold! Cheers to that!