Earlier this year, over 100 of Woodside’s employees, including new parents, HR and Diversity teams registered for a virtual workshop across Perth and Karratha sites on ‘Navigating your Career after Parental Leave and Juggling Work / Kids during COVID Lockdown’.

The workshop covered topics including resilience, productivity, confidence and how to be able to juggle a career and family life. Employees also heard personal experiences about managing a career and parenthood from Kerry Hill, Campaign Maintenance Coordinator at KGP and the facilitator.

The workshop was delivered by The Women’s Vault, established to help professional women including new Mums to continue to accelerate their career whilst juggling work/life responsibilities; and to provide programs enabling businesses to better support their employees.

The workshop was organised by Woodside’s internal committee called ‘Parent Warriors’ with one of the committee members, Kerry Hill, recently returning from parental leave and personally enlisting the support of The Women’s Vault.

Kerry initially sought support from The Women’s Vault as there is little specialist support available in how to return to work with a young baby and to a successful career including going from a dual-career couple to a full-time working Mother and stay-at-home Father.

“I really wanted some specific, tailored advice and support to me and my situation. I know returning to work and being a full time working parent with a career is a huge transition and I wanted to be prepared. After my husband and I benefited from Olivia’s services, I decided to organise a workshop for my fellow colleagues who could also benefit.”

“I was so proud to share my story as part of this workshop with the hope to inspire other parents to be more resilient, confident and productive, in all areas of their lives”, Kerry added.

Olivia Bath, Founder of The Women’s Vault and Trainer said: “Right now – particularly with the ongoing pandemic – organisations are keen to support their employees in any way possible. I was thrilled to be able to share my experience of working at one of Australia’s top 4 banks whilst juggling a six month old and how I managed to thrive, as well as the practical advice that I share in my programs with Woodside employees.”

The workshop was well received and future workshops for parents and managers is being looked into.

The Women’s Vault helps professional women, including new Mums to accelerate their careers and achieve work/life balance, by sharing the path to succeed and cope with stress. It provides one to one coaching, group coaching and digital programmes to its clients and businesses, including workshops for new parents and employee wellbeing programmes.