Career development is often discussed in terms of opportunity: the programmes available, the roles advertised and the routes employees can take through an organisation. But for women, the presence of opportunity doesn't always make progression feel possible.
Whether someone puts herself forward can depend on much more than ambition or ability. It can depend on whether the route ahead is clear, whether flexibility is genuinely accepted, whether she sees women succeeding around her and whether a leader gives her the confidence to move before she feels completely ready.
For a long time, career progression often relied on understanding things that were never formally explained. Employees had to know how to gain visibility, which relationships mattered, how opportunities were shared and what decision-makers considered leadership potential.
For women, those unwritten rules could make an already uncertain path even more difficult to navigate. An opportunity might exist but accessing it could depend on whether the right manager noticed someone's potential or whether she felt confident enough to make her ambitions known.
Siobhan Hourihan, Senior HR Director at Cloudera – ranked among Ireland’s Best Workplaces™, Ireland’s Best Workplaces in Tech™, Ireland’s Best Workplaces for Health & Wellbeing™ and Ireland’s Best Workplaces for Women™ in 2026 – reflected on a conversation she’d had with a woman earlier in her career. The woman wasn't asking for special treatment. She simply wanted to know the rules of the game and trust that they would be applied equally to everyone.
That expectation is becoming increasingly important. Siobhan observed that the next generation of women isn't necessarily asking for fundamentally different things from work, but they are asking for a much higher standard of clarity and consistency. They're less willing to accept that informal access, visibility or manager discretion are simply “how things work”. They want to understand what progression requires and know that strong performance will be recognised fairly.
At Cloudera, that has meant becoming more intentional about identifying potential and future leadership capability earlier in the employee lifecycle. Rather than allowing development to depend solely on informal visibility or an individual manager's judgement, the organisation continues to strengthen the structures surrounding talent and succession.
It's a shift from treating development as something that happens during an annual review or once someone enters a formal programme. Growth becomes continuous, with clearer links between an employee's potential, the experiences available to them and the capabilities they'll need in the future.
That same need for clarity emerged at Seetec – ranked among Ireland’s Best Workplaces™, Ireland’s Best Workplaces for Women™ in 2026, and winner of the 2026 Special Award for High-Performing Culture – but through a very practical challenge. Noleen Nannery, Operations Director, explained that employee feedback had repeatedly highlighted the organisation’s relatively flat structure. Employment advisors make up the majority of Seetec's workforce, but with a limited number of management positions available, many couldn't see how they could continue progressing within their existing role.
Employees wanted straightforward answers. How could they develop? How could they earn more? What did they need to demonstrate to reach the next stage of their careers? In response, Seetec created its Employment Advisor Excellence Programme, introducing Associate, Practitioner and Lead levels within the role. Each stage is connected to clearly defined expectations across service, team contribution, assurance and results. Employees can now join the organisation and understand where they could be within two or three years, without having to wait for a completely different position to become available.
The programme made progression visible where a traditional career ladder couldn't. It allowed employees to increase their responsibility, recognition and earning potential while continuing to develop within the role they already held.
It also changed what was required from managers. If employees are told that progression is linked with performance, they need regular and honest feedback about where they stand. Managers must be prepared to explain what someone is doing well, where improvement is needed and what must happen before she can move to the next level.
Noleen described that accountability as one of the programme's most important effects. It encouraged managers to work more closely with their teams and have conversations that might otherwise have been delayed or avoided. At the same time, employees were given greater ownership because the expectations were no longer hidden.
For women, that transparency matters. It means progression is less dependent on being noticed at exactly the right moment, having access to the right informal network or feeling confident enough to repeatedly ask what comes next. The path is there for everyone to see. Discover how HR leaders can turn policies and commitments into meaningful workplace practices.
Even when the path ahead is clear, taking the next step can feel daunting. Many women question whether they meet every requirement, whether the timing is right or whether greater responsibility can be balanced with everything happening outside work. But confidence rarely arrives in advance. More often, it develops once someone is given the space and support to step forward and discover what she can do.
Noleen experienced that herself after joining Seetec. Her move into the organisation had already represented a significant change. After working in financial services and being made redundant, she was on maternity leave when she applied for a business manager role supporting people back into employment. The position brought her home to the Midlands and combined two things she'd always valued: leading teams and doing meaningful work.
Not long after joining, and following another period of maternity leave, she began being offered responsibility across a much larger area. Noleen questioned whether she could balance it all. She knew she could perform well as a business manager but wasn't sure whether she was ready to deliver the same results across a wider region and through other managers.
What made the difference was a leader who didn't expect confidence to come first. Noleen was offered the more senior responsibility on a secondment basis, giving her the opportunity to test herself while retaining the security of returning to her previous role if it didn't work out.
That safety allowed her to say yes. Rather than waiting until she felt fully prepared, she developed confidence through the experience itself, accelerating a career that would ultimately lead her to become Operations Director.
Seetec continues to create that same kind of safety for other women. Noleen shared the example of a colleague who had progressed from an entry-level position but questioned whether she was ready to move into management. She was encouraged to take the position for six months, with her previous role protected if she decided it wasn't right for her. She remains in management today and is performing exceptionally well.
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Noleen captured the role leaders can play with one simple idea: if you don't have confidence, borrow it from someone else. Sometimes another person's belief gives a capable woman enough certainty to take the first step, allowing her own confidence to catch up later.
At Cloudera, Siobhan described a similar turning point for an employee who accepted a stretch opportunity outside her usual area of responsibility. Afterwards, the woman reflected that she hadn't realised how capable she was until someone gave her the space to try.
That space is central to how Cloudera approaches development. Siobhan described career growth as increasingly dynamic and cross-functional, with employees building capability through a collection of experiences rather than one predetermined route. Stretch opportunities allow women to move beyond what they've already proven and discover strengths they may not have had the chance to demonstrate before.
The organisation has also worked to make learning easier to access. Siobhan referred to short, practical development experiences as “development snacks”: learning that fits naturally into the flow of work rather than requiring employees to step away from it for long periods. A recent microlearning course on owning your career focused on mindset, personal ownership and approaching career growth with confidence.
The format may be small, but the principle behind it is significant. Development shouldn't only be accessible to people who can carve out additional time or commit to a lengthy programme. When learning can happen as part of the working day, more women can engage with it consistently and apply it immediately.
Learning and opportunity, however, need to be supported by psychological safety. Siobhan spoke about a woman who had recently stepped into a much more visible role. Earlier in her career, she had learned to be cautious about speaking too much or challenging ideas because she worried that confidence would be interpreted as being difficult. In a more supportive culture, something changed. She stopped spending energy trying to fit the culture and redirected it towards contributing consistently.
It's a powerful reminder that bringing women into more senior or visible positions is only part of the work. Women also need to know they can ask questions, challenge ideas and use their voices without being judged by a different standard. Opportunity allows someone into the room. Psychological safety determines what she can do once she's there.
Few things expose the gap between workplace policy and workplace culture more clearly than flexibility. Sarah Downing, Chief People & Capability Officer at EirGrid – ranked among Ireland’s Best Workplaces™, Ireland’s Best Workplaces for Women™ and Ireland’s Best Workplaces for Health & Wellbeing™ in 2026 – joined our recent How the Best Workplaces for Women Are Driving Real Change webinar on the same day her son was graduating from secondary school. While participating in an important professional conversation, she was also thinking about an important moment happening in her family life.
It was an ordinary example, but that was precisely the point. Women at every level of an organisation are managing full lives alongside their careers. The circumstances may change – children, parents, caring responsibilities or personal commitments – but the need to balance them doesn't disappear when someone moves into leadership.
Sarah has spent much of her career working in environments where she was one of very few women at the table. EirGrid itself operates within engineering and energy, areas that have traditionally had a predominantly male workforce. For Sarah, female leaders have an important role to play in making those realities visible and ensuring the women coming behind them experience something different.
Seeing a senior woman acknowledge that life is happening in the background sends a powerful signal. It shows that leadership doesn't require women to hide the other parts of themselves or pretend those pressures no longer exist.
At EirGrid, that understanding is reflected in how work is designed. The organisation offers hybrid working, with employees generally spending a minimum of two days in the office, alongside flexibility around when they begin and finish their office time. Rather than monitoring whether someone arrives at one particular minute, the emphasis is on creating the conditions in which people can perform and collaborate effectively.
Importantly, that flexibility is available across the workforce. It isn't positioned as a special arrangement women must request or explain. When flexibility becomes part of how an organisation works, women don't have to worry that using it will make them appear less committed to their careers.
That same intention begins before someone joins EirGrid. As the organisation grows, it measures how many women apply for roles, how many reach interview stage and how many ultimately move through the recruitment process. Sarah was clear that measurement matters: organisations can't understand whether their efforts are working if they don't examine the outcomes.
EirGrid also reviews the language used in job advertisements. Historically, job descriptions in engineering and infrastructure could be written in ways that felt heavily male, using requirements or language that discouraged women from seeing themselves in the position even when they had the underlying capability.
The imagery surrounding those roles matters too. If every person shown in an engineering environment is a man in a hard hat, women receive an immediate message about who is expected to belong there. EirGrid has become more intentional about showing women in those settings, helping potential applicants picture themselves as part of the organisation.
Sarah summarised the approach as language, image and starting early in the talent pipeline. EirGrid strives for a 50:50 gender balance within its graduate programmes, recognising that the representation an organisation wants at senior levels in the future has to be built through the people it attracts and develops today.
This is what makes women's progression an organisation-wide responsibility. It isn't only about supporting an individual woman once she's identified as having leadership potential. It begins with whether she applies, continues through the experience she has at work and depends on whether the organisation remains somewhere she can realistically build a career.
Cloudera takes a similarly broad view when assessing the effect of its work. Siobhan explained that measuring attendance or participation in a development initiative isn't enough. The more important question is whether women are genuinely experiencing the organisation differently over time as a result.
That means listening through employee feedback and looking at the relationship between flexibility, psychological safety and trust. Cloudera offers fully remote, hybrid and office-based working styles, but flexibility is only effective when employees trust that using it won't undermine their visibility or future opportunities.
A development course can exist without changing who progresses. A flexible-working policy can exist while employees remain afraid to use it. An organisation can recruit more women without creating an environment in which they feel able to speak. The measure of progress isn't simply whether an initiative was introduced. It's whether women can feel the difference in their everyday experience of work.
Creating workplaces where women can see a future
Organisations are approaching women’s career growth in different ways. Cloudera is making development more continuous, accessible and connected to psychological safety. Seetec has created visible progression within a flat organisational structure, while EirGrid is examining the entire talent journey – from the language and imagery used in recruitment to the flexibility that allows people to sustain their careers.
What connects these approaches is a recognition that women’s progression cannot depend solely on individuals becoming more confident, visible or skilled at navigating unclear systems. Organisations must also examine what they can change to ensure talent is recognised and opportunities are accessible.
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Women still need to take ownership of their careers, put themselves forward and remain open to experiences that stretch them. But responsibility can't sit with women alone. Leaders need to make expectations visible, create safety around new opportunities and understand that support isn't a concession. It's often what allows talent to emerge.
Growth rarely comes from one significant moment. It comes from the small decisions made repeatedly: speaking up when it feels uncomfortable, putting yourself forward before you feel ready and choosing to do something differently.
For women, making those decisions becomes far more possible when the workplace around them offers clarity, trust and room to try. Because creating opportunities is only the beginning. Real change happens when women can see those opportunities, access them fairly and believe they can pursue them without leaving the rest of their lives behind.
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