'Cos' women staff retention strategy should support inclusion'

Advocating gender diversity at workplace, human resource experts have said companies need to have a "conscious and balanced" approach to bring in more women to their payrolls while strengthening efforts to retain those in the 3-5 year experience band.
Notwithstanding the fact that several studies have shown how the bottom lines of both public and private sector firms, benefit from having more women in leadership, nearly 50 per cent of women workforce in India drop their career in the middle, compared to just 29 per cent across Asia.
"There needs to be a conscious and balanced approach to have more women in the organisation," PwC India Capital leader Jagjit S Human said adding that "there is an urgent need to raise our ability to develop and retain women post their 3-5 year experience span."

According to a report by research firm Catalyst on India's IT sector, women begin their careers on an equal footing with men when it comes to designation and pay.
However within 12 years, women make around Rs 3.80 lakh less than men and receive fewer developmental opportunities at workplace.
"It is vital that organisations closely examine their retention strategies. Firms should build a system of checks and balances that support diversity and inclusion at all levels including engaging in conversation with women during the initial stages to establish their career aspirations," Catalyst India WRC Executive Director Shachi Irde said.

International development agency ActionAid estimates that USD 9 trillion is the cost that women in developing countries bear each year due to unequal wages and the fact that women have less access than men to paid jobs.

"The time has come for women's work to be counted and understood better. Be it through monetisation, institutionalisation or sharing of work," ActionAid India Director Programmes and Policies, Sehjo Singh said calling for reforms in labour laws and state policies.
Ramnath Venkatraman, MD - Human Capital and Diversity, Accenture India said: "Companies are focusing on hiring and retaining women at every level. They are strengthening policies that support women in critical life stages like pregnancy and childcare and re-skilling women to enable them to return to work".
Echoing similar views, employee productivity improvement solutions provider, Sapience Analytics Co-Founder and CEO Shirish Deodhar said: "Companies can adopt more flexible policies for women considering the many hats that most of them wear".

Tata Communications Global Head-HR Aadesh Goyal said: "Gender diversity is one of the most significant aspects of our human resource management and we constantly encourage aspirational goals for women in leadership roles."
Global HR major ManpowerGroup considers diversity in the workplace to be essential and noted that it follows an annual diversity and inclusion plan which focuses on gender diversity and is driven by the global leadership team. Implementation, progress and results of the plan are tracked on periodical basis.