The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) estimates that by 2010, women will make up half the workforce.
BANGALORE: A year ago IBM conducted a survey on the family needs of employees. The result: a childcare centre, which was set up at one of its Bangalore offices.
“This was to attract more women to our workforce,” says Kalpana Veeraraghavan, Asia Pacific leader of IBM Global Work Life Fund. Similar initiatives by IT companies have increased the proportion of women employees in the sector to 30%, which is 9% more than it was three years back.
The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) estimates that by 2010, women will constitute half the workforce in the industry, which is already the case in the BPO sector.
“Women are seeing value in this sector. Good work environments, gender-inclusive policies and excellent pay are attractive propositions,” explains NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik.
The industry finds women to be more productive than men and less prone to job-hopping, contributing to reduced attrition rates. “We have observed that women bring some special attributes to the workplace in addition to competence which they imbibe from their social conditioning.
They are dedicated, stable, patient and innovative,” says S Padmanabhan, global HR head of TCS, where women form 25% of the workforce, up from 21% in 2005.
Companies feel the need to put in extra effort to attract women since they don’t aggressively market their resumes like men.
The referral programmes of Accenture and IBM offer more incentives to employees referring women for employment.
HCL finds women employees more loyal and retainable compared to men. “They stay 1.5 times longer than men,” says an HCL spokesperson.
Little wonder companies are developing women-friendly policies. TCS and IBM offer the option of temporarily discontinuing work due to family commitments. Infosys has built a “satellite office” in Bangalore for pregnant women and young mothers to spare them the daily commute on bad roads to the main office located on the outskirts of the city.
“Women have to go through various stages of life such as motherhood. We cannot afford to lose them by not accommodating their natural requirements,” says Geetha Kannan, associate vice-president of Infosys.
“Women in the knowledge industry are well paid and it involves less physical labour. The industry is also becoming more sensitive to women’s needs,” says Madhumita Mahapatra, a software engineer at Accenture.
Flexibility of movement across departments, such as from a technical role to HR, has also helped. Shuchi Garg, a software engineer at Infosys, says such initiatives make more women choose careers in IT: “I am going to get married soon and will have to avail of these facilities later. I see that such facilities are attracting more and more women to take up offers for the long term without second thoughts.”
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