Embracing International Men’s Day in your workplace
With International Men’s Day (IMD) fast approaching, we thought it timely to share some ideas on how you can celebrate IMD in your organisation.
On November 19, IMD provides a worldwide opportunity for employers to celebrate the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities.
Workplaces are communities, and can offer the right environment for men to feel supported and encouraged to bring their best selves to work. This means helping to support any vulnerabilities they have alongside recognising their role and achievements in being part of the success of an organisation.
Here’s a few ideas to get your started on embracing International Men’s day in your workplace:
🔵 Start talking more about men’s mental health and well-being. Hold an informal men’s forum that can act as a safe space for men to share viewpoints, personal experiences, commonalities, differences and challenges.
🔵 Develop internal qualified coaches that can support male employees balance their career and parenthood with our Parental Transition Coaching Qualification (PTCQ), certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
🔵 Explore the role of men as active parents. Run a webinar to explore fatherhood, and the challenges faced by men as parents, particularly new fathers.
🔵 Offer coaching sessions to males employees navigating big changes like parental transition and career progression.
🔵 Promote men as positive agents of change in society; role model inclusive behaviours. Ask internal male role models to lead the campaign.
🔵 Engage line managers. Consider ways of empowering line managers to talk about mental health, workload and stress as part of normal conversations in 1-2-1s. This can help men at work to feel more comfortable to open up when facing issues.
Ian Dinwiddy, our dad’s coach says:
“There is a growing awareness that building a diverse and inclusive workplace is not a challenge that can be easily solved by only creating initiatives only aimed at women. Initiatives to support women in the workplace remain of crucial importance, but with dual income families becoming significantly more common, an additional focus on men has the benefit of re-framing the conversation away from the prevailing binary gender stereotypes of female carer and male breadwinner.
When men are confident that they can be great dads, without sacrificing their careers, we can normalise flexible working and parental leave for all, which is good for well-being, gender diversity and closing the gender pay gap.” See the full interview with Ian here.
There are plenty of reasons to promote and celebrate International Men’s Day. It is a great chance to share, listen to and be inspired by the diverse experiences that men have. Don’t let it pass you by. If you would like any help in organising an event contact henriette@pandpcoaching.co.uk.