Empowering women to grow within UniCredit
Tuesday 17 May 2022
UniCredit partners with Valore D for the launch of the WeFly® Programme – an international and cross-company women's mentoring program - supporting our ambition to increase female representation in management roles, providing female managers with additional career support to boost their strengths, know-how and skills.
At UniCredit, increasing our gender diversity is a strategic priority. Our ambition is to achieve gender parity across all levels of our organization, and this ambition is supported by our several female-focused initiatives within our Group.
We want to support and enable more women to build long and satisfying careers within our Bank, and we are specifically working to increase the representation of women at management level.
To bring our efforts to life, we take a multifaceted approach – investing in a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment, designing the Global Job and Skill Framework, and promoting our female talent and leadership within our Group and beyond.
Our diverse offer of development programmes for female colleagues stands as a testament to this commitment. The most recent example of this via Executive Development, is the recently concluded Women in Leadership Programme – a 9-month initiative featuring 27 female FVPs who joined virtual courses focused on maximising their growth potential, providing them with tools to empower fellow women across the organization.
Subsequently to this we will be launching the WeFly® Programme – an international and cross-company women's mentoring program by Valore D powered by UniCredit. Our partner Valore D has been promoting gender balance since 2009 through more inclusive corporate cultures, to ensure that Italy and its businesses grow.
The Wefly® programme will engage middle management women to support them in exploring more international careers. Through cross-country mentoring, participants will experience different professional cultures, helping to enrich their management styles.
The match between mentors and mentees is defined through a tailor-made interview process to ensure the best matches in terms of personal attitudes and professional goals.
Over the next 7 months, each mentee will be paired with a mentor, allowing them to grow their professional network, familiarise with various cultures, strengthen their ambition to further achieve professional success and empower future generations of colleagues.
Commenting on the program, Siobhán Mc Donagh, Head of Group People & Culture said:
“UniCredit remains fully committed to providing the best professional growth opportunities to women at all levels across the Group. As testament to this, we are continuing to make progress in our ambition to increase female representation in management roles. We are proud to work with Valore D, a respected leader in promoting gender balance. Together, we will provide additional career support to all female managers to determine their strengths, increase their know-how and further build on these skills – because when you do what you enjoy, it shows. For many years, our company has invested in internal mentoring and coaching, and we will continue to do so with this ambition in mind.”
Paola Mascaro, President at Valore D commented:
"Even today, many women do not take on new career challenges, or explore international careers, often because of a lack of confidence in their self.
The value of a cross-company experience such as WeFly lies in the opportunity for women to confront with different cultures and learn from different management style, a fundamental step to build a solid career path for tomorrows D&I leadership”.
Learn more about UniCredit’s support for Women
Further recognitions for our Gender Diversity & Equality Best Practices