Though many things have changed in the past year and a half, one thing has held steadfast—Our employees, and employees everywhere, want to be included in the workplace. Engaged employees are happier, more productive, and better equipped for professional development… And for a good reason!
At Timmons Group, we feel strongly that good work comes from well-taken care of employees, so, alongside our investment in a uniquely valuable company culture, we’ve invested time in creating resource groups that help our employees engage with their peers in healthy and tangible ways.
We have several employee resource opportunities at Timmons Group including Diversity in Design, a variety of Timmons Group sports leagues (soccer, softball, and volleyball to name a few!), employee focus groups led by the Timmons Group Diversity Council, and Women in Design. Though our resource groups vary in discipline, they all serve a similar objective: To bring together employees with commonalities to inspire growth, development, and inclusion.
Women in Design was Timmons Group’s first established group of its kind, though it was founded before many of us understood the impact of the term ‘employee resource group.’
Since 2017, the goal of Timmons Group’s Women in Design has been to recruit, develop, and retain talented women, a mission that will ultimately lead to an increase in the number of women in leadership roles in the A/E/C, technology, and design industries.
Timmons Group’s 2021 steering committee is comprised of Lee Ann Gudorp, PE; Shannon Hayes, PHR; Sarah Bowers; Ashley Johnson, PE; Kathleen Halpaus; Tracy Lower, PE; Stephanie Giovannetti, CSM, CSPO; and myself (Lillian Minix).
Our Women in Design group hosts quarterly events for all women at the firm. So far in 2021, we have presented a variety of lunch and learn meetings including a session based on the CliftonStrengths assessment, leadership panel discussions, and a speed networking development workshop. Our next quarterly event is a discussion surrounding the book “The Moment of Lift” by Melinda Gates, a first-hand account of Gates’ dedication to helping women around the world harness their own potential.
We build these sessions for women across the firm with an assortment of professional backgrounds, including engineering, technology, design, and support services like human resources, marketing, IT, and finance. A common idea that our steering committee shares is that we believe in the importance of investing in all women at Timmons Group and that we’re making a larger impact for professional women in the industries they serve.
Getting together for a cup of coffee or in-person discussion has undoubtedly been difficult lately, but our Women in Design group has kept up engaging sessions for women firmwide in recent months, consequently discovering that virtual interactions can provide quite a lot of benefits to the group’s goals.
In light of the pandemic, new challenges presented themselves for how to effectively collaborate with group members throughout the firm. With 18 offices nationwide, this challenge existed pre-Covid, but means of hosting engaging sessions were different. Now, platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom help us create a safe and energizing atmosphere for virtual learning as a group.
We are able to host discussions with breakout rooms, share screens and documents, take polls, and immediately answer questions in the open chat, all tools have allowed us to continue providing unique seminars and workshops.
This past March, Timmons Group’s Lee Ann Gudorp and Sam Na were invited to participate in a panel discussion with ChamberRVA’s ChamberWomen, “The Benefit of Mobilizing Employee Resource Groups”. Lee Ann and Sam were joined in the discussion by industry leaders who head up their own employee resource group at Williams Mullen.
Intriguing conversations from the panel led our Women in Design and Williams Mullen’s Women’s Initiative to plan a joint effort learning experience for our groups in November, “Women in the Workplace: How to be an Effective Advocate for Other Women.”
The virtual panel discussion will explore questions that many of us have about how we can help each other grow in the workplace like, “Who can be an advocate for women?” and, “How do you become an advocate for other women?” Four panelists who have all experienced being a mentor and/or mentee in their professional career and as women will lead the conversation.
It’s exciting to know that employers, whether in our industries or others, see the long-term benefits of employee resource groups like Women in Design. “When we started the Women in Design group in 2017, I didn’t even realize we were creating an employee resource group. But I’m proud of how it’s grown and how we’ve been able to collaborate with other ERGs with similar missions,” Lee Ann says.
Employee resource opportunities like Women in Design will continue to help diverse workplace groups find long lasting inclusion and growth in both their personal and professional lives.
Learn more about Timmons Group’s employee resource groups here.
