Business women form power groups

Janice Fredric. Photo / Supplied

Corporate culture is still heavily male-orientated, says BNZ national managing partner Fiona Ehn.

That is one of the reasons the bank runs a series of business growth seminars aimed at women, she says.

The seminars have proved popular - BNZ has 40 booked for this year so far.

They are part of BNZ's wider Growth Programme, which offers training and support to business clients in areas such as succession management, governance and leadership.

"The power of putting people through these programmes is they start to think about the future and start to move out of low-cost, low-productivity use of their time," Ehn said.

The women in business seminars grew out of courses designed for women working in the agricultural sector who, they found, faced specific challenges around isolation and the nature of their work, she said.

But the courses now catered to a wide range of women, from those starting or running their own businesses to those at middle-management level.

A recent Grant Thornton survey showed that still only a quarter of senior management positions in New Zealand private companies were held by women, Ehn said.

"You see that there are obviously some underlying challenges there that maybe we need to give more support to."

The seminars focused on business and personal goals. Women were helped with issues such as long-term planning, identifying strengths and career aspirations.

"It's not so much that there's different content [to general courses], it's more the power of the conversations they have. One of the strongest things that it does is introduces them to other people like them who have similar sorts of issues, and creates a network."

The courses cost $500.

Westpac offers similar courses as part of its Managing Your Money programme.

The free seminars all covered the same core material but were tailored to their audience, community engagement manager Colleen Bermingham-Brown said.

In particular, Westpac had found demand from women with corporate experience who were now mothers and wanted to start home businesses to fit around childcare.

Women have a different world view, she believes. "Looking at those little startups at home, those ideas that get created around the coffee groups - they're entrepreneurs with softer edges."

Bermingham-Brown said the Managing Your Money seminars in general were popular and the bank had done 129 in the last six months.

The National Bank runs around 150 free workshops a year, a spokeswoman said.

While it did not run seminars for women in particular about 40 per cent of attendees were female.

The bank also offered numerous business solution guides online, including one on running a business from home.

ASB ran regular industry and topic-specific seminars for business customers, general manager business banking Paul Duncan said. They covered topics such as business planning, strategic planning, marketing and cashflow management.

Supportive seminars

Janice Fredric usually avoids "women only" events.

But the chief executive of Christchurch law firm Duncan Cotterill had heard course facilitator Sue Lindsay speak before, and decided to attend the BNZ Women in Business seminar.

"There's something about the way Sue facilitates."

Fredric had been doing some work on business and life goals so the course was ideal timing.

"It wasn't focusing on women in business in an exclusionary way at all," she says. However, it did provide a warm and supportive environment for addressing where she was and where she wanted to be, and to put down some action points.

"The best thing is that Sue keeps sending little emails with more information and more hints and tips, so it keeps you focused."

The last ones were articles on making an appointment with yourself, and the value of saying no.

Fredric did the course with another Duncan Cotterill staffer, and the two women meet once a month to check on each other's progress.