2020 - Impact study of the Revel@Her mentoring programme

THE REVEL@HER PROGRAMME

The Revel@Her mentoring programme of the Club XXIe Siècle offers a unique coaching to high-potential women graduates from diverse backgrounds to help them overcome the double glass ceiling due to their gender and origin.

The Chair, as an expert partner, has been mandated to measure the impact of the mentoring relationship on the leadership of the women mentees.

The programme is innovative because it is aimed at talented people who face a double glass ceiling: the one linked to their gender and the one linked to their ethnic or cultural diversity. Young women from diverse backgrounds are often not aware of the double discrimination they face and think that their difficulties stem either from their origin or from their gender but are not aware of the combination of the two. Yet it is precisely the combination of these discrimination criteria that is the most difficult to understand and overcome.

This programme is organised and coordinated by the Club XXIe Siècle. Mentors are recruited from among the members of the association, women and men who agree to devote time and energy to accompanying the mentees who apply to be part of the programme.

The mentor enables the mentee to envisage new perspectives, to better understand the codes of the company in order to evolve. Not being part of the same organisational context and totally voluntary, the mentor is a great opportunity to bring a neutral and benevolent viewpoint to the questioning and the journey of the mentees who participate in the programme.

Mentoring is organised around a goal set by the mentee in a spirit of support, learning and sharing. Each mentoring is different and will not meet the same expectations or challenges.

The Diversity & Inclusion Chair and the Club XXIe Siècle are convinced that a better professional integration of women from diverse backgrounds, and a fairer evolution for them within companies, are real societal challenges.

SUMMARY

After following the Revel@Her mentoring programme, participants have more self-confidence: 95% feel that their self-confidence has increased and 90% feel that they know themselves better.

They have taken control of their career: 70% feel they have more control over their professional life and 85% feel they are more proactive in seizing new career opportunities. In fact, this resulted in 6 of the 20 mentees applying for a promotion. Here are a few testimonies on the subject:

"I no longer question my ability to do a particular job, I no longer practice self-censorship.

"I was able to identify the obstacles I was putting in my way, which were preventing me from achieving my objectives.

In addition, mentees have a better work/life balance: 10 out of 20 mentees feel that they are better able to manage their work/life balance, with benefits in both directions (their personal life weighs less on their professional life and their professional life weighs less on their personal life).

In addition, the participants are more committed, more successful and more satisfied at work: 70% of the mentees feel that their well-being at work has improved and 75% have seen their performance improve.

Thanks to the programme, mentees have learned to develop their networks: 95% feel more comfortable developing their professional network.

"The mentoring programme as a whole helped me to [...] become aware of my strengths and mobilise my network.

Another positive aspect of this mentoring programme is that the mentees have developed their sisterhood, which is reflected in this testimony:

"[With the health crisis] we were all obliged to exchange via WhatsApp and so it really created a super dynamic group with exchanges both on professional groups, webinars, books, films, shows, ideas, podcasts... and a real nice complicity with a group of exchanges and mutual aid.

The mentoring programme allowed them to change their perception of their work and of themselves:

"I think that mentoring has changed my perception of work, my perception of myself... of what I can expect. And I can now say to myself that if tomorrow doesn't go well, if I don't get what I want, I'm not the problem, I'm not in the right place."

Today, the mentees have become aware of the barriers and are better able to get around them: they are more aware of stereotypes (90% of them) and discrimination (85% of them), identify them better and are more reactive in order to thwart them.

This mentoring programme gave the mentees the keys to understanding the issues at stake and to better find their way through the labyrinth of professional life.

This study also shows that the mentoring relationship is defined as an exchange from which both parties benefit. Mentors also benefit in several ways:

• Awareness of stereotypes (for 75% of respondents) and a better understanding of women's issues in the professional world (75%).
• The development of softskills such as listening skills (69%) and better self-knowledge (63%).

Finally, the added value of mentors is both in the career development of mentees and in the psychosocial support they provide. Mentors perceive this double added value of their support:

• On the career development aspect: 94% of the mentors felt that they had helped the mentees to develop their career plan and to improve their understanding of professional codes.
• On the psychosocial support aspect: 100% of the mentors felt that they had helped the mentees to develop their self-confidence, 88% felt that they had helped the mentees to develop their ability to communicate effectively, and 81% indicated that they had helped the mentees to improve the quality of their interactions with their professional entourage

FIND OUT THE FULL RESULTS

The results of the impact study of the Revel@Her programme were presented by Hager Jemel, Director of the Chair, Ingrid Bianchi and Florence Bourjij, pilots of the Revel@Her programme of the Club XXIe Siècle, on 22 March 2021 during a webinar followed by a question and answer session.

Find the document presenting the results (pdf)