Firms fight ‘daughterly guilt’ to lure women….Mehul Srivastava
From taxis on call to on-site camps during school holidays, companies like Google, Infosys, E&Y are doing their best to keep female employees happy
From taxis on call to on-site camps during school holidays, companies like Google, Infosys, E&Y are doing their best to keep female employees happy
When Preethi Mohan Rao quit her job following the birth of her first child in 2006, the 28-year-old tax professional was prepared to put her career on hold indefinitely.
Her bosses at Ernst & Youngs Global Shared Services in India would have none of it. As E&Ys Indian operations grew to almost 4,000 employees by 2010 from about 200 in 2002, the company accomplished something rare in India: having an equal number of male and female workers, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its March 7 issue.
The company had spent thousands of dollars training Rao and wasnt about to give up on its investment. The human resources department kept in touch, calling monthly to see how she was doing. They enticed her back with a flexible schedule and a nursery on the ground floor of the companys glass-and-steel building in Bangalore. At first, Rao worked two hours a day, then four, and after a few weeks went back to full time.
In spite of all the time we spent transitioning, I held on to all my projects, said Rao, now a manager.
That kind of pursuit of an employee may be uncommon in the U.S., with unemployment at 9 percent. Not in India, where the economy has grown 8.5 percent on average for the past five years and companies face chronic talent shortages. Keeping female employees has proven difficult in a male-dominated society that often frowns on women working outside the home.
At 34.2 percent, Indias rate of female participation in the labor force is the lowest among the so-called BRIC countries, or Brazil, Russia, India and China, according to United Nations statistics. Women make up 42 percent of college graduates in India, yet even those with diplomas are expected to let their careers take a back seat to caring for husband, children, and elderly parents.
The measures of daughterly guilt are much higher in Indian women than in the West, says Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a Manhattan think tank, who headed a study last year on the challenges Indian women face in the workplace. And since taking care of elderly parents usually becomes a reality later in their careers, it takes them out of the workplace just when they should be entering management roles.
To counter these challenges, Google Inc. (GOOG) has taxis on call for employees, a particular draw for women who may need to rush home to care for a sick family member. German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim Gmbh, mindful that families frown on young women traveling alone, will pay for an employee to bring her mother along on longer trips. Indian outsourcing company Wipro Ltd. (WPRO) runs on-site day camps during school holidays in the spring.
Infosys Ltd. offers its female employees sabbaticals, extended maternity leave, and enhanced training when they come back to the office. That has helped boost the percentage of female workers returning after childbirth to about 88 percent from about a third in 2006. Infosys also tracks women after they return to make sure they are being used effectively and not back-benched.
A lot of men believe maternity is a disease, and we have to teach them, said Nandita Gurjar, senior vice president for human resources at Infosys.
E&Y says keeping women on staff requires more than just making them happy — the company works on their families, too. It sponsors family visits where parents and in-laws crowd the office, shaking hands with E&Ys India chief executive officer and other high-level managers. The purpose of the exercise is to help them understand what their daughters do at the company and that their work is valued.
Mahendra Jain, CEO of E&Ys Global Shared Services in India, said the companys push for gender diversity isnt profit-driven.
If you asked me if theres a bottom line benefit to having an equal number of male and female employees, I would say the answer is no, Jain said. But its something we have held on to as part of our culture, and its always been part of how we do business here.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mehul Srivastava in New Delhi at msrivastava6@bloomberg.net;