KOCHI: The world is becoming more gender inclusive day by day, and the proof of this can be seen across sectors. Recently, IT companies in the state came forward with more liberal laws concerning woman employees, especially pregnant and working mothers.
Earlier, new mothers who took a break after childbirth had difficulty in getting back to their careers. This caused them to fall behind their male counterparts in promotion or a raise in salaries. To bring a change to this, some companies have taken a bold stand, supporting mothers who return to their jobs after the break.
Many woman employees have welcomed the move by their employers in providing a level-playing ground, by understanding their needs during pregnancy and ensuring good care for the mother and child.
“Our company provides a seven-month maternity leave with full salary, and extended accumulated leave of nearly two months. Apart from that, they can also avail of another one month of loss of pay and 15 more days if their colleagues are ready to share their office responsibilities. This is a welcome move from the part of the employer in ensuring a healthy working environment for the would-be mother employees,” said a young engineer from Kochi, who wanted to keep her identity confidential.
Another new mother, who is working at Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram and now in remote working mode, said the perceptions of hiring women for IT jobs have changed in the past one decade.
“Earlier, I have heard my seniors complaining that their seniority and work experience had to be sacrificed, as they were forced to take a break after childbirth, and until the child reached pre-school, they had to abstain from the workplace. However, companies are now giving us the work from home option as well as reduced work hours according to the availability of team members,” said a new mother, who preferred confidentiality of her organisation.
According to Anu Koshy, head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, UST, the company believes in equity, inclusion and richness of diverse perspectives to make an impact for our customers, communities, partners and employees. “We welcome open and honest conversations that create opportunities for innovation, growth, and collaboration. We are strongly committed to fostering inclusive communities where every UST associate feels valued, thrives and achieves their full potential,” she added.
Encouraging a new start
UST encourages and helps especially woman candidates seeking a career comeback, especially those who have taken a job break for family reasons or to raise children. The company has gender-inclusive policies as well, explained the officials.
“Programmes like Network of Women USsociates (NOWU), mentoring, UST Career Architecture framework, D3 — a global developers conference celebrating talent in the technology world — and ‘Women Unlimited’ have been highly impactful towards furthering inclusivity and community building. From being one of the first digital technology transformation companies in India to hire a trans woman to designing internal communities like ‘Curved Colors,’ a group for the LGBTQAI+ community, UST proves its active involvement in supporting and sustaining an inclusive culture,” an official said.
John M Thomas, CEO of Kerala IT Parks, said they are assisting businesses that are willing to hire women returning to work after a break and collaborating with various government agencies to reskill them to improve their employability. This is part of a plan to improve women’s participation in the workforce.
“Women make up roughly 40% of Kerala’s IT workforce, a figure that is significantly higher than that of other states. We see a healthy level of gender diversity at the entry level, but it diminishes as we move up the hierarchy. We seek to address this issue. Several companies in the IT parks have implemented schemes to promote diversity and a flexible working atmosphere for woman employees,” he said.
Nazneen Jehangir, executive director and CEO of NeST Digital Pvt Ltd, would be one of the right persons to talk about gender inclusivity and the need to encourage women to restart their career without hindrances after taking a break for personal reasons. The policies of the company had always been supportive to women who demand better work-life balance and support during demanding schedules both at office and at home.
Close to 40% of employees at NeST Digital are women, which is a fairly high ratio when compared with similar organisations. They also have a good representation of women at senior roles -- more than 30% of their architect and project management fraternity are women.
Exclusive mom programmes
As part of the early career hiring, they are in the process of launching ‘Restart Your Career’ programme, targeted exclusively towards women who want to rebuild their career after a sabbatical. This programme will not restrict itself to onboarding a few women with a break in their career, but will also focus on creating customised learning paths for those who would want to establish back in their professional lives. “There are multiple situations where woman employees are offered flexibility to work so that they can balance their career and personal life.
These are implemented in one of the following formats: (a) A sabbatical for women who want to focus on their personal side for a limited time period, (b) a flexi work option where employees are offered the freedom to choose their work hours, and (c) an option where employees still continue on their career, with a lesser pay commensurate to the lesser number of hours they put. All these policies are implemented in a gender-neutral fashion, but the largest benefactors have been woman employees,” the officials said.