Flourish co-founder Sarah Skelton recently joined SheCanCode’s webinar to share her perspective on thriving as a woman in tech startups.

Drawing on her 25+ years in sales, recruitment and leadership, Skelly offered candid advice on navigating gender dynamics, innovating in early-stage businesses and building inclusive teams that perform. In this article, we round up her key takeaways, from championing authenticity in the workplace to creating holistic support systems that help women flourish, both professionally and personally.

Skelly on: navigating the challenges of gender diversity in tech start-ups 

I think skill is trainable in every sense. It’s about having the attitude and seeing the opportunity. What I love is how many young individuals I meet who want to get into tech and how many tech businesses are really trying to be much more diverse, much more inclusive and bring more women in. 

The advice I would give when I think back to 25 years ago when I started out, I felt like I had to almost behave like a man in that environment to be seen and to be heard. And now I just want people to know that it’s good to be authentic and it’s good to know that you’re in the room for a reason. 

Try and surround yourself with like-minded people and join communities like SheCanCode and others where you can learn and get ideas. 

At Flourish we’ve set up a community ourselves called “Females Who Flourish”. The idea is that we can share ideas, knowledge and we can hopefully inspire and educate. 

Skelly on: embracing innovation and agile methodologies 

When you’re building a start-up it’s much easier to be agile than when a business is already fully scaled. 

When we came to market with Flourish, I felt really confident that I knew there was a place for us and I knew from my experience what businesses were wanting. We had that purpose, but it was like how do we do it differently? How do we innovate? What’s missing? And for me, one of the most exciting innovations we’ve brought to the table is partnering with a business called Human OS. 

About 11 years ago, I placed HumanOS founder Bianca as a fresh grad into an IT organisation. She went into sales and was really successful, but after a few years wanted to set up for something herself, retrained and founded HumanOS and we’d kept in touch. 

When I founded Flourish, I thought this feels like a really good fit because what we’re trying to do is not just get individuals into these tech organisations and like that’s it, off you go. We want to holistically support them. 

HumasOS is a tech platform that provides wellbeing that people can access world-class coaches to draw down on mental health, stress, burnout, nutrition, fitness, and in our case also sales coaching and professional development. 

For us, the innovation was finding something that felt like it added to the purpose. It was really needed in the market, but it was unique. and you don’t go to any old recruitment business and that sort of support post-placement. 

For people that are looking to get into a startup, it is fast. It is tough. But how nice to able to impact what you’re doing at the start of it because you’ll never get that opportunity. 

Skelly on: the female experience in the (Flourish) workplace 

Transparency is really important and having an open door policy where people feel that they can come to you. 

We said right at the start: if people don’t see other people like them that’s a challenge. In every division of the business, there’s women that other women can see. Because we hire a lot of early career talent, I feel a bit like a mother hen at times, but I think one of the important things is to be properly inclusive.

To me, it’s not a headcount. These are people. These are somebody’s daughters that I am looking after. And I think about my 12 year-old and in 10 years when she’s in employment. And I think how I would want her to be treated in the workplace. I care deeply about these individuals. And I want to make sure that they have the support, that they can trust me. They know I’ve got their back, that I’ll give them guidance. 

As we get older and we go through the journey, you want to know that if you’ve got a person with children that they’ve got that flexibility like yes, of course, take your kid to school, or if you’re going through the menopause, we can support women through that part of their journey. 

The key is to act on what you say, not just have these policies. You need to demonstrate it through behavior. You need to show trust. You need to feel like or they need to feel like they can talk to you. 

If you missed it, we encourage you to watch the webinar back for a truly inspiring discussion alongside Needi co-founder and CEO Louise Doyle.