Last week, we were delighted to speak at Dreamforce to You Manchester in Manchester to talk about the launch of our Salesforce Super Mums Programme to help more women get into tech.
Our new programme trains up professional women in Salesforce administration skills, to help them back into work after having a family. Alongside training in Salesforce, we are also providing a foundation knowledge in business analysis, change management and project management, access to work experience, mentoring and case studies.
As a social enterprise, we run a commercial Salesforce consultancy, but we also have social goals. As part of our social mission we are excited to focus on this new campaign to help more women access roles in technology in the UK and internationally over coming years.
We have three key goals:
- To support and train mums in Salesforce and complementary skills to re-enter the workforce by offering a range of courses. Click here to find out more
- To provide charities with some free days of Salesforce support using our trainees. Click here to find out more
- To provide recruitment support to any company or organisation engaged in Salesforce who can offer well-paid flexible job opportunities for mums in the Salesforce eco-system. Click here to find out more
Why mums?
Heather Black, our Managing Director and Mum of two, is passionate about supporting women back to work after having a family, and her team at our Company reflects that passion. Heather and the team have personally experienced the pressures placed on working parents, and felt that they could help to make a difference to this cause, and help overcome some of the challenge it presents.
Did you know that the disadvantage for women returning to work exists at a number of levels:
- 2.6million mums are not working, and according to recent research, 7 out of 10 can’t find flexible work, with 55% of those who do go back to work accepting more junior positions. (https://digitalmums.com/blog/workthatworks-report 2016)
- The gender pay gap still stands at about 19%, with the average British woman earning around 80p for every £1 earned by a man (Closing the Gender Pay Gap, July 2015). This report also identifies that for those women who do start out on similar pay levels, there is still a big chance that having children will mean they end up falling behind financially and that opportunities are still too rare for those who want to work part-time because of caring responsibilities.
- According to the Family & Childcare Trust’s 14th Annual Childcare Costs Survey, the cost for all types of childcare for under-fives has risen by at least 27% under the last Parliament. (source: Family & Childcare Trust 2015).
- Women are under-represented in IT and make up under 30% of the workforce and just 20% of IT graduates. Only 10% of app developers are women (source: Tech Women in UK report 2015, FE Week).
- Women can lack confidence, experience and skills to enter employment and need additional support to reach their potential, particularly after having a family.
Why Salesforce?
Salesforce embrace the importance of equality, and hired Tony Prophet as their Chief Equality Officer in September 2016. He quotes on their campaign page
“Inequality, in all its forms – Gender, LGBTQ, Racial or otherwise – is an issue that every company must address for its own benefit and to create a better world. We believe businesses need to focus on closing the Equality gap with the same energy put into creating new products and markets.”
It’s prevalent that there is a skill shortage in the Salesforce eco-system, and we need more professionals to be trained up in Salesforce and to progress into the range of roles available within salesforce administration, project management, consultancy and developer work.
All of these job roles offer the opportunity to be flexible for mums, whether it allows them to work in the office or remotely, part-time or full-time and/or on permanent or ad-hoc contracts. Every mum wants and needs something different to suit their circumstances.
The professional backgrounds of the mums applying the course are diverse, ranging from corporate, non-profit and SME sectors, and spanning CRM, IT, Business Analysis, HR, Marketing, Sales, and Project Management roles across a wide range of business industries such as IT, Finance, Retail, Logistics, and Media. They are the perfect fit to add-value to the Salesforce eco-system.
Take Action
- If you are mum and interested in our courses click here
- If you are a charity and interested in working with our trainees click here
- If you are a company or organisation and interested in recruiting a mum for contract or permanent roles click here
