IT companies click on gender diversity, scout for talent across the board

Already the largest employer of women, these companies are now viewing women as the cutting edge of the talent war

The recent Nasscom Strategic Review points out that the Indian IT services industry is the highest recruiter of women with over 1.8 million being employed so far, 36 per cent of the total workforce in the sector. The report goes on to say that over 200,000 women will be hired in FY2022 alone. It also claims that the over $200-billion IT services industry is the largest private sector employer of women.

Compare the 36 per cent figure to the actual percentage of women who enrolled for studies in the STEM category in India. According to a United Nations 2020 report, 43 per cent of all graduates in STEM fields in India are women. This figure is higher than the percentage of women opting for STEM in countries such as the US, UK, Germany and France.

Though tech companies are outliers in terms of gender balance compared with the rest of Indian industry, managements will have to focus on diversity even more given the general talent shortage. Analysts and tech companies believe that a 50 per cent ratio of women employees in the workforce is a must. Indian IT players appear to have taken the first steps in this direction. There are reasons for this. According to a McKinsey report, a 10 per cent rise in women employees will add $700 billion to India’s gross domestic product growth by 2025.

Companies Business Standard spoke with agreed that retaining women employees needs to be a conscious effort. Take the case of India’s largest IT services giant, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). With a headcount of over 550,000, the company has 36.8 per cent of women representation, which is almost over the 200,000 mark.

Ritu Anand, chief leadership and diversity officer, TCS, said the journey on diversity began as early as 2007-08. Anand attributes the success of TCS managing such a large women base to leaders within the company, especially the CEO. “The other important aspect is how you engage with a diverse segment of your population? How are you represented, are you consciously trying to increase the representation of women within TCS across levels, which is happening. And how leadership opportunities for them are being created,” she added.

The company took the simple step of creating a central portal where information about open senior leadership roles are posted. So, instead of only a select few men gaining information about these roles around the water cooler, everyone got to see what roles are available. “We have seen women have a higher success rate when they have applied for these roles. When I see five to six women business unit heads managing half-a-billion to $1 billion of businesses, it just tells that we are on the right path,” said Anand. She agrees that though the proportion of women in senior roles is small, nearing 15 per cent, a few years back it was only 11 per cent.

One of the success stories at TCS has been its flagship programme called iExcel to groom mid-level women managers for leadership roles through an immersive curriculum. So far 1,088 women have undergone the programme. Moreover, 67 per cent of participants in iExcel have reported role movement. Anand also makes the point that the proportion of women who take long leave, such as maternity leave, and have chosen to return to work is almost 94 per cent.

Accenture is another company that takes its diversity agenda seriously. The company claims that 45 per cent of its employees in India are women. The company also has women in 24 per cent of its senior leadership positions (managing directors) in India. Currently, it employees over 250,000 people in the country, its largest anywhere in the world. In 2017, the company had set a goal of achieving 50:50 workforce by 2025.

In an earlier interview to Business Standard, Piyush Singh, senior managing director, Accenture India market unit lead, said: “We had adopted the goal of gender equality much ahead of our peers. We are not very far away from our global goal and our aim is to do so across the pyramid, from the board to the workforce level.”

With attrition zooming and the war for talent heating up, companies have understood the need for well-established diversity programmes. Mindtree recently announced the launch of a returnship programme for technology professionals. Though it’s open for all who had taken a long break, it is targeted at women. “The programme will include digital learning boot camps, skills-based intervention, mentorship, and opportunities to work on live, cutting-edge projects. Restarting a career after a break can be at once exciting and daunting. The objective of our returnship programme is to make that return as seamless and effective as possible,” said Suresh Bethavandu, chief people officer, Mindtree.

Paris-headquartered Capgemini, too, is focusing on women employees who went on break. Aiman Ezzat, global CEO, Capgemini, told Business Standard earlier, “In India we recently launched as an experiment a programme to rehire women candidates (especially ex-employees who resigned in the last three years from Capgemini) with broad data skills. During this pilot we saw nearly 80 per cent of these women are willing to rejoin Capgemini.”

Covid-19 has also contributed to the demand for a much more diverse workforce, with flexi-work models and focus on project-based work rising. In a recent report, Taskmo, a B2B gig marketplace, said the gig economy in India has seen a 3x surge in women’s participation in H2 of 2021. In a month, 10,000 to 12,000 women apply for tasks on the platform, whereas six months ago there were only 2,000-4,000 women participants. Fin-tech, edtech, e-commerce, fashion tech and health-tech are showing maximum job allocation for women gig workers.

Around 50 per cent of women who registered at Taskmo were from Tier 1 cities, 30 per cent came from Tier 2 cities and close to 20 per cent were from Tier 3 cities. This demographic change is remarkable; in pre-pandemic times, 70-75 per cent of women workers were from Tier 1 cities alone.  

Having women in board-level and leadership positions must be the next big shift for the Indian IT sector. According to KPMG’s Director Pulse Survey 2021, nine out of 10 directors believe that diversity plays a relevant role in creating a positive impact on the company as well as society.

As Indra Nooyi, former Pepsico CEO, recently said at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum 2022, for diversity to make an impact, one has to start with numbers. “If you do not have 20 per cent of your employees or senior manager women, you cannot train your people on inclusivity,” she said. The tech sector has shown that it has numbers. Now we will have to see how this transforms to more leadership roles and how this number goes up.