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Pharma major Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd is betting big on women power both for ramping up its business and harnessing talent with exclusive ‘SHE teams’.
“The SHE concept is the first of its kind in the pharmaceutical industry,” Chandrasekhar Sripada, President & Global Head - HR, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, told BusinessLine here.
As part of the initiative, the company has formed an all-women sales team, mainly consisting of women returning from career breaks. These Special Hospital Executives (SHEs) will carry out sales and marketing functions.
“We ensure that they maintain work-life balance by suitably fixing their work schedules and location,” Sripada said, adding that the main objective was to hire women who wanted to play a second innings in their career.
The SHE teams will focus only on one or two institutions, and create long-term relationships with resident doctors. The firm now has 100 members as part of its SHE teams across the country. “They have achieved ground-breaking results, meeting their yearly targets in six months,” Sripada said. The hiring for SHE teams has been centred mainly in metro and semi-metro locations.
Flexi workDr Reddy’s, which topped the ‘Diversity Asia’ list drawn up by management consultancy Carnstone, has been able to attract women professionals back to work after a break on the strength of the ‘special treatment’ and flexibility in work it offers them, Sripada claimed.
For instance, 42 of the 43 women employees who went on maternity leave during April-November of the current financial year have returned to work. Dr Reddy’s extends other benefits such as six months’ paid maternity leave with an option to extend it by one month, two hours’ off every day up to one year to attend to the new-born and exemption from the Bell curve appraisal for one year.
The attrition of women workers in India has come down from 13.7 per cent in FY15 to 6.5 per cent in the first half of FY17, while hiring has almost doubled from 8.5 per cent to 16.2 per cent in the same period, according to Sripada. Dr Reddy’s now has over 21,000 employees on its rolls.
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