Ensuring gender parity. Companies step up efforts to ensure gender parity in leadership roles

At the time of recruitment, companies induct an almost equal number of men and women but women’s representation in leadership roles continue to be less than 15 per cent. 

While women’s representation in junior professional/specialist roles globally was at 41 per cent in 2023, at the C-suite and Board level, it stood at 13 per cent and 14 per cent respectively, according to a recent study by IBM. The study estimates that it will take three decades to achieve gender parity in leadership roles. However, companies are now realising the high cost of women leaving or not being elevated to leadership roles. 

Also read: Ashok Leyland rolls out Embrace Equity programme

Speaking to businessline, Neha Bagaria, Founder & CEO of online career platform JobsforHer and networking platform for women HerKey Club said, “Companies realise that if women talent leaves or not go up the leadership ladder, then it is much more expensive for companies to replace them with external talent. Hence, now more and more companies are looking at specific interventions to grow the number of women in leadership pipeline.”

Salesforce’s move

We spoke to companies like Flipkart, Dell, Wipro, Salesforce, and others on their respective efforts to increase women’s participation in leadership roles. Arundhati Bhattacharya, CEO and Chairperson, Salesforce India said, “We have expanded the remit of our own Chief Equality and Recruiting Officer. This move reflects the relevance of diversity in our company values, as well as in our day-to-day operations. For instance, senior leaders continue to receive monthly overall and VP+ scorecards, detailing headcount, hiring, attrition, and promotion data by Gender and Race.” 

Also read: Zoho’s Marupadi initiative aims to bring women back into the workforce

Globally, 28.5 per cent of women are in a leadership role at Salesforce, according to the company’s 2022 Annual Equality Update.

Wipro’s approach

Further, in the case of Wipro Limited, the company has taken a two-pronged approach to improve gender representation across levels – first by defining unit-wise diversity KPIs for top leaders and having a range of I&D (inclusion and diversity) programs for career enablement.

“One such flagship program is Enrich, our sponsorship program for high potential senior women leaders launched in 2021, which aims to improve gender diversity at leadership levels by strengthening the pipeline and creating an ecosystem of enablement,” said Sunita Rebecca Cherian, Chief Culture Officer, Wipro Limited. Wipro’s total workforce is around 250,000 employees globally, out of which close to 36.3 per cent is women.

Amazon’s policies

Similarly, Amazon has come up with policies like Pinnacle, which is a program that focuses on women at mid management level and help them grow to the leadership level. Talking about the thinking behind this policy, Deepti Varma, VP, People Experience and Technology at Amazon Stores India and Emerging Markets said, “We realised that it is not just about creating a platform but it was also about creating a peer learning atmosphere where women can learn from each other and get mentored in order to grow to the senior level positions.”

Amazon also has a program called Rekindle to help women who have taken a maternity break to come back to work slowly , with the required flexibility.

Dell and Flipkart

Dell also has a similar ‘Return to work’ initiative that is aimed at helping women restart their careers after a prolonged break. This is in addition to other programs like RISE- which is designed to help women move to the next level in their careers. 

“Targeted for high potential women team members in mid-career, RISE gives them the necessary tools through training, workshops, events, and written material, enabling them to excel at work. The curriculum assists female managers in developing abilities like networking, public speaking, and creative thinking,” said Savneet Shergill, Regional HR Head – India, Dell Technologies.

Flipkart has introduced a range of initiatives such as the “Mom on Board” programme for new mothers, which aims to ease them back into the workplace, and ‘Mentoring Circles’ which helps them create a network of women who can lean on each other.“Policy reviews are something that we prioritise on an annual basis to ensure that our employees are not only receiving the best, but also the most relevant benefits - and some examples that have brought value to our women Flipsters include our parental support policy, period leave, miscarriage leave and involved parenting initiatives,” said Krishna Raghvan, Chief People Officer, Flipkart.

COMMENT NOW