IGI offers Career Excel to all female employees
International General Insurance Holdings (IGI) will offer Career Excel to every female employee across its five offices in an effort to help them advance their careers.
The move is part of its ongoing diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiative. Women working at IGI will be able to access the online program from any location, complete it at their own pace and take away actionable strategies.
Career Excel is an 18-week e-learning curriculum that addresses the challenges women face in the workplace. It helps participants to develop skills such as self-advocacy, networking, confidence and assertive communication through weekly online classes, exercises and group coaching calls.
The platform was designed by Jennifer Willey and Hira Ali, who between them have over 35 years of business, human resources and training experience with academic and proprietary research.
Aaida Abu-Jaber, IGI’s head of marketing and public relations, argued that diverse and inclusive businesses are more innovative, creative, profitable and fun, yet female leaders continue to be under-represented in insurance.
“IGI is at the forefront of supporting women to ensure they have the same opportunities as men,” she added. “We are an equal opportunity employer with a 50:50 male to female ratio workforce, and we understand that investing in developing young women’s leadership skills will not only change the course of their future, but also that of their communities.”
Willey, who is also CEO of Wet Cement, said Career Excel is “an ideal solution for global companies like IGI that have employees spread out across multiple offices and countries.”
IGI has operations in Bermuda, as well as Dubai, where it is based, and London, Amman, Kuala Lumpur and Casablanca.
IGI created its D&I programme in 2018. It recently partnered with the Jordanian-founded social enterprise The World of Letters, which spearheaded a collective women’s movement called Women as Partners in Progress, highlighting gender imbalance in the workplace in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
It also hosted Dive-In Festivals – the insurance industry’s event to highlight and celebrate efforts on D&I initiatives - in both 2018 and 2019, as well as other initiatives promoting D&I, such as The Insurance Insider Progress and the Insurance Supper Club.
