Insights

When years of professional experience meet a menopause-related confidence wobble. THE GREAT PROFESSIONAL CONFIDENCE DISAPPEARING ACT 🎩 You’ve built a career. You’ve solved problems, managed difficult colleagues, delivered projects, navigated office politics and survived meetings that really should have been emails. You know your stuff. You’ve got the experience, the skills and possibly a drawer full of notebooks containing plans that could run a small country. So why, sudden

THE INVISIBLE PAIN BEHIND THE PROFESSIONAL SMILE Picture the scene. You have your work clothes on, your laptop open, three meetings lined up and a to-do list that appears to have been written by someone who thinks there are 36 hours in a day. You are ready to conquer the world. Except your knees hurt, your shoulders ache, your fingers feel stiff, and getting out of your chair requires the sort of negotiation usually reserved for international peace treaties. Welcome to the le

The season of change has arrived. There is something rather lovely about the Harvest Moon arriving just as summer packs away its deckchair and autumn starts rummaging around for its woolly jumpers. 🍂 Saturday, 26 September, saw the 2026 Harvest Moon. It arrives just a few days after the autumnal equinox, which marked the astronomical beginning of autumn here in the UK on 23 September. The Harvest Moon is traditionally the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox, and this y

Why inclusion matters when your career, confidence and priorities are changing NATIONAL INCLUSION WEEK: MORE THAN A WEEK OF GOOD INTENTIONS National Inclusion Week is here, and this year's theme, Build Trust. Navigate Change., could hardly be more relevant to the world of work. Because change is happening everywhere. Organisations are restructuring. Technology is transforming jobs. Teams are becoming more multigenerational. Employees are asking for greater flexibility, better

STARTING OVER? OR MOVING FORWARD? “Starting over” sounds dramatic, doesn't it? It conjures up images of burning your CV, handing back your years of experience and turning up for your first day in a completely new career armed with nothing but enthusiasm and a reusable coffee cup. But here’s the thing: you are not starting from zero. You are starting from experience. Whether you're considering a career change, moving industry, returning after a career break, stepping into self

Every year on 4 August, International Owl Awareness Day celebrates one of nature's wisest creatures. Owls have long symbolised wisdom, intuition and the ability to see clearly in the dark. Perhaps that's why they make the perfect mascot for career change. 🦉 The wisest of Owls. Many professional women spend years looking after everyone else's careers, families, teams and ambitions before pausing to ask one important question: "Is my career still right for me?" The answer isn'

Have you ever noticed what happens when you have too many browser tabs open? At first, everything works perfectly. You barely notice the extra tabs sitting there. Then a few more appear. A work document, an online shop you meant to come back to, a recipe you saved, a news article you wanted to read, something you need to remember for later. Before long, the computer starts slowing down. Not because one tab is the problem, but because they are all competing for attention at th

The British weather has a reputation for being unpredictable. You can leave the house in sunshine, encounter a sudden downpour before lunch, experience a dramatic gust of wind by mid-afternoon, and then wonder why you ever packed an umbrella in the first place! ☔ Interestingly, our careers can behave in exactly the same way. Changing weather results in changing landscapes! Recently, I found myself organising a large public event for a club I had only been involved with for ab

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and yes, I know I'm a little late to the party. In my defence, I was busy celebrating my 50th birthday in what can only be described as spectacular style. I headed off to an amazing music festival completely on my own. 🎶💃 And before you ask, yes, it was absolutely fantastic. My butterfly costume looked fab in the breeze! At some point during the weekend, after a conversation with a lovely woman in the toilets at 4am, I somehow managed t

If AI were a colleague, it would be that wildly efficient new starter who can draft meeting notes in 12 seconds, reorganise a spreadsheet before your tea goes cold, and still leave everyone slightly suspicious about what exactly it is planning next. For professional women in the UK, artificial intelligence is not some distant sci-fi plotline . It is already shaping recruitment, job design, promotion pathways, skills expectations and, quite frankly, the mood music of work itse