Mumbai: Women’s attrition remains a big challenge for companies. Tapping into the vast potential of women from underprivileged sections of society could provide the requisite solution through simple methods of creating career intentional initiatives. Corporate exposure, role models and mentors have emerged as a key vector of career intentionality creators that upgrade women from underprivileged backgrounds, in their careers, according to Avtar Group’s career intentionality report.

These, along with career intentionality sustainers (family support, scholarship, motivation net, additional coaching and infrastructural support) and career intentionality propellers (such as intrinsic skills like determination, focus, hard-work and ambition), form a career development model that has helped women in their socio-economic development (see graph).

The study was conducted between September 2016 and January 2017 and covers 1,488 subjects, who had spent more than eight years working for the same organisation at an early career stage. Of these, 34% — or 496 women — came from underprivileged backgrounds and had studied in corporation/government schools. All of these 496 women, spread across India, had managed to follow a path that was divergent from that followed by the majority of women in socio-economically challenged backgrounds. The women, currently employed in white collar jobs, had broken out of poverty and were instrumental in creating a better life for themselves by building a career development model framework that allowed them to persist against all odds and rise to a better socio-economic status.

Saundarya Rajesh, Founder-President, Avtar Group, said, “This study, which was constructed upon identifying a trend of low attrition associated with women employees from humble backgrounds, revealed that when a girl from an underprivileged family obtains a role model or a mentor who intervenes at critical junctures in her life, she becomes ‘career-intentional’ and, in eight out of 10 cases, is able to complete tertiary education that leads her to a higher-paying job, as compared to what she would have earned as a domestic servant. This presents a unique opportunity for corporate India to build a new cadre of gender-diverse talent, which has the potential to buck the trend of high women’s attrition.”

From 25-30% at entry level, depending on the sector, the percentage of women in the workforce declines to 16-20% at mid-level, falling to single digits at senior management levels. Improved maternity benefits, day-care centres, flexi-working arrangements, second career internship programmes and leadership development are important interventions that most progressive organisations adopt to facilitate diversity. But experts believe the buck does not stop here.

Pratap G, senior Director (HR), Maersk Global Services Centre, said, “The deceptive myth of what a ‘leader looks like’ can hinder women from getting into senior leadership position. This further gets compounded in situations when women decide to drop out of work or take a tentative career break, thus impacting decisions on hiring, promotions and career progressions.”

With the league of many other organisations looking at gender diversity, Maersk is consciously evaluating and deploying initiatives for talent attraction, retention and growth. “Our biggest challenge is to get to a culture of inclusion, building cultures where an unconscious bias is challenged and managed and where all employees work in an environment that enable and unlocks their potential,” said Pratap.At Asian Paints, mentoring, coaching, job rotation/exposure and leadership development are gender-neutral interventions.

Emrana Sheikh, VP (HR), Asian Paints, said, “We believe that nothing can substitute raw ingredients, namely determination, focus, hard work and ambition for successful careers. Every drop adds to creating the ocean and, hence, every woman leader that emerges in the organisation sows the inspiration for many others as a role model — our endeavour is to be at this journey continuously.”

According to Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-Founder & EVP, TeamLease Services, a critical role corporates stand to play is helping women at work understand the importance of the career intentionality creators, sustainers and propellers.

“As a second step, help them differentiate each from the other and, to take things forward, showcase actual proof by having them interact and seek guidance from women, who have scaled new heights activating all three. While doing is in the hands of the women, corporates aim to provide clarity and a push here and a nudge there,” said Chakraborty.

In the study, around 84% of women said their socio-economic development was due to the presence of the career intentionality creators, while 67% attributed it to career intentionality sustainers and 72% to career intentionality propellers. Women’s contribution to the Indian economy, according to a McKinsey report, is the lowest on a global scale, at 17%. Avtar noted with over 70% of women living outside of urban conditions, it is important that inclusive policies extend to the entire socio-economic spectrum of women to improve their workforce participation.

Source: Times of India