Yesterday was all about International Women’s Day and an opportunity to reflect how globally – governments, people, and organizations- have worked towards transforming the lives of women. This year’s theme “Gender Parity: #PledgeForParity” encourages companies to sign up for 50-50 representation of women in all spheres, rooting for half of the workforce in every organization or institution.
Globally, women account for about half of the working population. However, gender equality and fair representation of females in the workplace still remains a much-debated topic of today. According to multiple studies on gender parity, women are underrepresented at every level of the corporate pipeline — with the biggest disparity in senior leadership positions and the ratios are far dismal in developing countries like ours.
So what’s containing our growth?
Most women face concerns very different from men when it comes to working. From lesser salaries than men at the same level to lesser chances to advance their careers in later stages of work life due to social and family commitments; most arising from limited family-friendly policies or flexible working arrangements.
We must start with gender equality at the workplace, which translates to more than a poster tagline incentive with small perks and treats.
As per definition, equality and parity are realized when employees receive the same rewards, opportunities, and resources without a bias of their gender. Extending this to my organization, the belief that women need greater flexibility which goes beyond ensuring equal opportunities and treatment. We understand that women face altogether different challenges with regards to their careers and the deciding factors are much different for them as compared to men. Most of which become the reasons for many mid-senior level female executives to quit their careers forever.
Being a part of an industry which employs over 3.7 mn people and the largest private sector employer for millennials, we are ardent promoters of diversity and parity. For Teleperformance, the first step towards realizing a “Women Friendly Workplace” is gender sensitization. Through various employee engagement initiatives and employee workshops on a monthly basis, the efforts have been gaining momentum in this direction. Respect for everyone and equal opportunity is an integral part of the company credos and policies.
Nothing less than half the sky.
To step it up for gender parity, Teleperformance continuously re-looks the entire recruitment process for better representation of women across all levels and verticals. We are committed to maintaining an equal ratio in our recruitment process across all levels in an attempt to achieve gender parity by 2017.
The new norms focus on hiring more women, special efforts towards retaining them by instituting family-friendly policies, flexible work hours and the option of working remotely from home for women along with opening up channels of communication across teams.
We’re going to hold ourselves accountable to not just reaching our goals, but beating them.
This sharpened focus on gender diversity and parity is enabling us to offer an array of women-friendly benefits and policies to attract more women talent to the organization and ensure an inclusive work environment. We are committed towards gender equality in different areas that affect women every day.
THANK YOU!
YOU MAKE US WHO WE ARE.
Contributor: Neha Sethi @nehacsethi