Business as usual

Here's how some companies are ensuring high-potential women employees don't simply 'drop off' the roster

SAP Labs India's vice-president and head of diversity and inclusion Sheenam Ohrie learnt to speak her mind early in her career. In 1996, after completing three years with her then employer i-flex Solutions (now Oracle Financial Services Software Limited, which we will refer to as OFSSL here on), Ohrie was faced with the prospect of relocating to Australia - with her husband and without a job. She decided to give her luck a chance. She approached her supervisor with the idea of a sabbatical. Her boss agreed without kicking up a fuss she had half expected. And yes, during her sabbatical, Ohrie continued to be on the company's payroll.

Mind you, OFSSL didn't 'accommodate' Ohrie for charity - the company had identified her as a 'high-potential' candidate, one who could be groomed to take on bigger challenges. That's the crux. A sales executive in an FMCG multinational puts the challenge before companies succinctly: "There's a lot of competition out there for good talent. It is very expensive to keep going out and hiring and every time you do, you incur some cost - in identifying the right candidate and in training him or her."

The math, if expert estimates are anything to go by, is simple: For every mid-to-senior woman who leaves a company, the cost of replacement is three times her salary. And in knowledge-based companies, that can go up to five times. Easy to understand why companies are starting to find ways to keep their top female talent.

Now let's come to what Ohrie's current employer is doing. In 2007, SAP Labs India saw its maternity drop-out rate touch 69 per cent. So in 2009, based on employee feedback, the company started a maternity return programme called 'Run the Mummier'. The programme spans the time while a woman employee is pregnant, right through the leave period and for a short duration after she joins back. It takes various forms - face-to-face and telephonic coaching, counselling, awareness workshops etc during an employee's pregnancy. The company encourages employees to support women colleagues during maternity breaks. An 'amico' (buddy in Italian) is assigned to every pregnant woman. Anyone who registers to become an amico goes through a session to understand her responsibilities.

As a part of this programme, the company launched its Stay-In-Touch system so that employees availing of maternity leaves could stay connected to the workplace, look forward to a smooth return and settle down with ease. Once a new mom returns to work, she is provided with the option of admitting her toddler in the in-house creche, SAPlings, along with access to video surveillance software.

The results of this investment showed up quickly; a year after these programmes were introduced SAP Lab India's maternity attrition dropped to 31 per cent. With sustained efforts the current maternity attrition rate stands at 2.6 per cent.

Identify the hurdles
If you want them in the workforce, you have to look at the hurdles in the way. What actually stops women from staying on their jobs or going back to work?

Global studies have shown that a dearth of senior female role models and the lack of support infrastructure hold women back in the workplace. In India, usually the first roadblock faced by working women is at the time of her marriage, says an HR professional in a Delhi-based telecom firm. The second is childbirth and the third, taking care of old parents/relatives. In all these three instances the HR department's retention skills are put to test. In many cases the woman employee asks for a relocation.

Just a week before Diversity Day (January 21) celebrations at Bharti Airtel, one of its newly-married woman employees had put up an application with her HR head requesting relocation to Hyderabad, which was duly approved. Around the same time, another woman employee asked for relocation to a metro from a regional office. While Airtel offers flexible work options to many of its women employees, the company is wise enough not to create unwanted positions in the name of inclusion. The second application has been rejected on the ground of merit.

Childcare is the next major issue before women and see what some companies are doing to win over new mothers. There's a Rs 1.5 lakh insurance cover towards delivery-related expenses for mothers-to-be at Google India. Also, if the baby is sick or diagnosed with a problem, the new born is covered under the Rs 5 lakh general insurance scheme extended to the family. The company also offers a baby bonding benefit of Rs 13,650 to new mothers.

ICICI Bank goes an extra mile to ensure that there is no discrimination during performance appraisal against women on account of maternity related or medical leaves. Besides 180 days of paid maternity leave, there are 180 days of fertility leave for employees who need to undergo medical treatments. Additionally paid childcare and paid adoption leaves can be availed of even by single parents.

There's no dearth of perks at Tata Chemicals too. It claims to be the first company to allow extended maternity leave of up to one year. R Nanda, HR head of Tata Chemicals, believes that women employees value flexibility more than anything else. "If you can earn their trust during this time, it will work in your organisation's favour. Since the social ecosystem is not sufficient for a working woman, that is the least an organisation can offer to retain talent," adds Nanda.

Choose smart plan
The best of policies and perks will fail to work if they are not well implemented. That requires planning. "It's not as simple as it sounds," explains an HR head with a media company. "If someone goes on a sabbatical, someone else will need to be trained or hired to take over the position. So you need to look at succession planning, job rotation and the ability of other people to step in."

Look at Kaustipi Bhalla, a circle HR operations head with a leading telecom company who has 15 years of work experience. For most of her career as an HR professional she was based in Delhi. This was because her job profiles were strategic in nature and included deliberating on compensation decisions, retention and performance. Some years into the job, Bhalla yearned for a regional profile to hone her operational skills. Due to family commitments she could not take up a regional role too far away from Delhi. In early 2013, her boss told her about an internal job posting in Punjab. She lapped up the opportunity to work as the circle head immediately. She also had her calendar sorted. Any relocation in her company is approved for a minimum duration of 18 months. Her son was in eighth standard when she left for her new project. She says, "I will return to Delhi by the time my son enters the tenth standard."

Abonty Banerjee, general manager and head, digital channels, ICICI Bank, is happy to have spent around 14 years in an organisation that has rewarded her with flexibility for her commitment and loyalty. ICICI's workforce has 25 per cent women (across various levels). In 2006, she had to move to Delhi along with her husband. At that juncture in her career at ICICI Bank, Banerjee was looking after operations across 200 branches. "I was allowed to work away from our head office in Mumbai. Later, the company also allowed me to work part-time to take care of some personal commitments," she says.

Handle with care
While a large majority of women in India have embraced careers in banking, IT, media, advertising and hospitality, manufacturing remains largely unoccupied. A large chunk of those who get into manufacturing companies occupy positions in support functions like HR, marketing and back-end support. "The manufacturing industry suffers from a paucity of role models," says Chaitrali Shirur who joined Parle Products last year as head of HR. And why are there so few women in sales? Says Chaitrali, "We tend to hire more men for sales profiles because the employee is required to travel frequently, something women are averse to. Keeping the security aspect in mind, we offer sales postings with utmost care."

For its part, PepsiCo has spent a lot of time understanding the basic hygiene factors required by women to function effectively in a sales function. As part of its research, the company understood security is the topmost concern for women interested in taking up a sales job. The company has identified certain routes across the country that are deemed 'safe' for women. These routes, referred to as 'sales beats', are also marked on the basis of infrastructure (such as clean washrooms) available. Says Kimsuka Narasimhan, CFO, PepsiCo, India region, "While the results of this initiative are yet to show up, we try and up the diversity quotient right from the time we hire."

Taking of security infrastructure, ICICI Bank has set up an emergency helpline for employees in distress. The helpline provides round-the-clock access to qualified medical assistance and critical services such as ambulance over telephone. The bank has also launched the Quick Response Team (QRT) initiative to react quickly in the event of an emergency. QRTs are mobile vans with GPS navigation and tracker systems and can also alert a nearby police control room.

Another point many women executives
The Strategist spoke to while researching this article have brought up is that women need more networking opportunities. Such networks are essential to ensure a successful comeback as well. "You keep the job for this person and they will be trained and updated throughout the 'break'," says software company HR executive, "so when they do return, it's very natural."

For all the women waiting to return to work the trick is to keep yourself relevant and not just wait for the incentive to come your way.

Investing in women makes bottom line sense

  Having more women in management roles is good for the bottom line. Research shows that female board members in executive positions for listed companies impact positively on the firm's stock price - strong evidence that women in leadership positions can boost a company's performance.

Yet women continue to be under-represented at executive levels.

According to Liz de Wet, course convenor of the Women in Leadership Programme at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business in South Africa, there are three simple things that organisations can do to support women executives and grow the numbers of women in top jobs.

• Give women the space to develop their signature presence. First off, business has to be prepared to give its women leaders the space to do things their way, to make their own mistakes. Discovery Health's franchise director Kate Moodley maintains that women must remain true to themselves and their own way of doing business.

Rosemary Grant, a former general manager and board member of a mulitnational company, who now runs the GSB women in leadership programme alongside De Wet, says she deliberately took her time in settling into her new top management role and that she is fortunate that the company gave her this space. "I met all key players on a one-to-one basis and understood their particular business needs. I focused on having significant relationships with individual peers rather than running the risk of lumping them all under 'the old boys network' label."

• Provide coaching, mentoring and training opportunities. To help women stand their ground and develop their signature presence, De Wet says that businesses must also be prepared to invest in their development. "Women leaders undoubtedly benefit from specialist knowledge, and coaching support that allows them to translate their qualities, ideas and insights into sustained action for increased impact and visibility," she says.

Jane Farrell, joint founder and chief executive of the EW Group, says that getting more women to the top requires formal support from the highest levels. This can take the form of specialised training. The EW Group ran an intervention at the BBC in the UK, where women were dramatically under-represented at senior levels. Sixty BBC women progressed through two 18-month programmes. Two-thirds gained either promotion or new, valuable connections, and there were 'softer' benefits as women tapped into informal networks across the organisation.

Grant agrees that operating without sponsorship or mentorship in complex organisations tends to be a common barrier to progress for women. Such support can nurture innate leadership qualities and make a unique impact on the organisation. Without it, women risk just being subsumed into the dominant culture.

• Create networking opportunities and pathways of growth for women. Grant says that the time she invested in developing her networks was one of the best things she could have done and that one of the common mistakes she has observed when women step into senior roles, specially in male-dominated organisations, is that they underestimate the importance of networking.

Businesses that understand this and foster these elements will succeed in creating greater diversity at the top.

Kumeshnee West
senior manager, Executive Education, University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business