Welcome to Workplay: flex to work and play
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Workplay seeks to empower women athletes in football, including AFLW and VFLW players and women in umpiring, to pursue their sporting aspirations whilst developing successful off field careers.
The challenges facing women athletes across codes globally are consistent, balancing work, study, family and sporting commitments. As a professional network, Workplay aims to address these hurdles by equipping women athletes with valuable tools to thrive at every stage of their sporting and professional careers.
Workplay partners with likeminded organisations and individuals to connect women athletes to flexible employment, education, and professional development opportunities.
Together we challenge the norm and push boundaries to change the game for women in sport.
Stories and learnings to help women athletes excel at finding the balance between work and play.
Women athletes should be empowered to be their absolute best on and off the field – and that means having access to great career opportunities. Working with John Holland has helped me develop skills and experience in construction and set up an exciting future on projects both big and small. Most importantly, I’ve still got the flexibility I need to train and play my best footy.
I’d really encourage other athletes to access Workplay. I think it gives you a super balance between your on and off field pursuits. Having areas of focus outside of football allows you to develop yourself and stay stimulated on and off field.
Workplay is a vital platform for us part-time athletes that are working and playing footy at the same time. Everyone needs that external mental distraction so they can refocus on footy when they come back. Workplay enables that – you have your profile, you have a niche, people find you and you’re able to go into the pathway that you can go into and works flexibly for you.
We have an opportunity to be able to grow our skills and excel in a separate part of our lives as well. Workplay creates this opportunity for us and lets companies look at you and your skills and say ‘alright, that’s someone I want to work with.
Workplay is such a great initiative for players to be able to continue to develop their skill set outside of the four walls of their club. Being a professional athlete, you’ve got so many transferable skills that can be applied to the workplace. It’s so important to have a career or passion outside of AFLW, I think it really compliments your mindset towards training and games.
Workplay provides athletes a fantastic opportunity to identify their skills and where they can be applied. As an Umpire with experience in a high performing and pressured environment, the skills I’ve developed and utilise have a place in various roles.
Workplay is a great tool for supporting career development. It’s accommodating to your needs as an athlete when it comes to connecting you to flexible work and supportive people leaders/ mentors who understand and respect your sporting commitments. The network Workplay has built is game changing for women in sport, it’s allowed me to reduce the risk of retiring from the game without any work experience.
There are amazing opportunities provided to us through Workplay. The partner employers that are willing to work with us are really flexible which helps us build our professional careers alongside our football careers. It’s also a really great opportunity to work in a new environment, meeting new people and developing life skills that benefit you on and off the football field.
I encourage other athletes to join Workplay; our football careers are short and having the opportunity to develop in different areas of your life is really important. It opens up so many doors now and into the future.
I would advocate for people to join Workplay to develop their off field career for the exact reason that you don’t know how long football is going to last. You also want to be able to set yourself up for a life after football and Workplay allows you to seek and explore opportunities whilst you’re still playing where you might not have had the opportunity for prior.
