Building a Community: The Power of Rabo Women* in Tech Coffee Chats

Out of these constraints came the idea to organize meetups in a Coffee chat format, a structured but informal conversation with a group of people discussing different topics. Almost all of our Coffee chats are held online and last just an hour, making them more accessible for most people, than half-day or full-day events, as they’re easier to fit into busy schedules. This also means that more people can join, as our colleagues are located all over the world. We alternate the days and times of the day, so if a community member cannot make it one month, because of a fixed meeting or event, they may be able to join the next month. The host of the Coffee chat needs to prepare the session and introduce the topic, so their investment in the topic is key for setting up the tone of the Coffee chat. To make the session sustainable for the host, they choose the topic based upon their own interest and experience.

Creating Psychological Safety

The primary mission for the Coffee chats is to create psychological safety and foster a safe space for people to share their stories about hardships in their work. This way we hope that people connect to each other about these topics, so they no longer feel alone in their experiences: we are in this together. The topics we talk about are taboos and/or women's issues: menstruation, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, imposter syndrome, visibility at work and many other topics that women in tech particularly must deal with. But don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom. We also discuss topics like new year’s resolutions and what sparks joy in our lives.

A Coffee chat starts with our safe space rules, as we may touch upon sensitive information and want to ensure confidentiality. Then the topic is shortly introduced, and the host usually goes into their own experience of the topic. This opens the door for the type of personal interactions that we are looking for during a Coffee chat. After this introduction, the group is split into breakout rooms. These rooms get asked a question that prompts the participants to think about their own situation. The second question invites participants to try and help each other. Each breakout room is attended by an organizer to help guide the discussion and moderate if needed.

Our current setup has proven to be a very effective way of fostering a sense of community and creating a safe space for healthy discussions about sensitive topics. And it's not just us who feel this way; we ask for feedback at the end of our sessions. People report back to us that they feel seen and heard and feel this sense of community and psychological safety. Some testimonials:

"I love casually talking to colleagues! This event is great for socializing and discussing topics everyone can relate to."

"I loved the session! Thank you for organizing and facilitating. The choice of words you used to explain the whole session made it feel like such a safe environment."

"It was a safe environment. Also thank you for saying that we could keep our camera off at the beginning, since it helps the people who are a bit more shy to warm up to a group and share the video."

Insights and initiatives sparked by the chats

As community leads, we discovered that the Coffee chat could bring us even more: it gave us in-depth insight into what was going on in our community. For example, in the session about “unmentionables” we talked about menstruation and discovered that in our main building menstruation products are not available anywhere. This prompted us to start the PAM (Product Availability for Menstruators) initiative. We also used our community to gather experiences featuring inappropriate conduct. Under the name ‘Share Her Story’ we turned these experiences into a presentation and presented them to the CITO (IT) management. This sent a powerful message to the CITO management and helped them understand the human side of these situations. We believe that receiving these experiences directly from our community - rather than through many layers of management and reporting - will help them create policies that result in a safer environment within Rabobank for us all.

Coffee chats strengthen our community

Our Coffee chats have proven to be a meaningful and effective way to strengthen our Women* in Tech community at Rabobank. As leads, we’ve found that these informal, easy-to-organize sessions have allowed us to better support women* across the organization. By keeping the format simple, repeatable, and time-efficient, we’ve created a space that’s both flexible and inclusive—making it easier for community members to stay engaged without feeling overwhelmed. This initiative has helped us achieve our goals and foster a sense of psychological safety and connection. It’s been an inspiring journey, and we’re committed to continuing it. If you're building a community, we encourage you to try small, regular, inclusive gatherings like Coffee chats: they can make a big difference. We hope our experience inspires you to create spaces where people feel seen, heard, and supported.

*We write women here to include all people that identify themselves as women, those who don't like binary gender definitions and anyone else interested in supporting women in tech.