Mentors by Side, Women Score Big
Some
companies are trying out specific modules to train female staff for bigger
roles
When
Vineeti Agarwal, senior information developer, globalisation services, at SAP
Labs was confused about choosing a technical role or a people-centric role in
her career, going forward, she decided to seek a mentor.
“A technical expert or a people manager. I was confused about which of the two areas would suit me in a leadership role, going forward, so I decided to seek help,” recalls Agarwal.
SAP Labs had sent out mentorship invites to female employees like Agarwal last year, who were expected to put in their requests through applications. The company had published the list of mentors-senior professionals in the company on a portal.
Over sessions with a mentor who had been voted as one of the best managers in the company, Agarwal was familiarised with people and emotional management skills, and was evaluated and analysed for both the roles by exploring her blind spots over a period of time.“I could shadow my manager, and was encouraged to learn how she managed to balance her work with personal passions, an area which I had been neglecting.She got up at 5 am everyday to practise Carnatic music. I was also made to realise that work is part of life and for the wheel of life to be complete, I had to learn to balance work and family time,” she says.
For Agarwal’s colleague, Priya Ramamurthy, an associate manager for business by design, it was about improving networking skills. “I was used to the same set of people in my environment, and my mentor had handled multiple teams and through him, I learnt the art of networking with diverse people across steams,” she says.Tohelp her overcome her inhibitions, Ramamurthy’s mentor even egged her on to present a paper at SAP TechEd, India’s largest technology event with over 5000+ attendees from the industry. “I learnt the importance of building a network and being able to put forward my achievements to others in the corporate world,” she says. From becoming more assertive at the time of appraisal conversations and the art of negotiations to networking more aggressively with their male superiors, certain companies are putting in place exhaustive and expansive measures to groom their women leaders to take on their male counterparts.
Over the past six months, Maruti Suzuki has introduced three key programmes for mid-managerial women professionals to facilitate their development. While Women Integrated Leadership Development, or WILD, focuses on enhancing their influencing skills by managing perceptions, Aakanksha or I Can Lead encourages women to participate in external forums, where they could learn from each other’s experiences and sharpen their skills. Multitask-her aims to prepare women to juggle multiple roles by working smart, improving their self esteem and managing stress. “The idea of these specialised programmes for women is to prepare them for leadership roles in the company and thereby expanding the leadership pipeline for future. We are confident these programmes will help our female talent to groom themselves for bigger roles,” says SY Siddiqui, COO, administration, Maruti Suzuki.
Padmaja Alaganandan, leader of PwC’s people and change practice, cites the example of women managers being coached on handling appraisal conversations in a company in the services industry.“Coaching was imparted to women managers in this company on how to handle appraisals. It was not about blowing your horn but they were told to not be too coy either. There was a need to train them on how to do that,” she says.
SAP Labs introduced coaching programmes for its women leaders in the third quarter of 2013 and divided them into sets: emerging managers and emerging leaders. Emerging leaders included women with 12-18 years of work experience while the eligibility for emerging managerswas6-10 years.The company brought in 30 coaches to train women to get better at leveraging their networks and negotiate and balance work and family life. The programmes have clocked 700-800 hours till now.
“For emerging managers, issues are generally more technical and can generally be solved through mentoring and training. For emerging leaders, concerns are more complex and are generally softer in nature and get solved through higher tools like coaching / observing through shadowing,” says Sheenam Ohrie, head of diversity and inclusion, Sap.
More leaders are emerging to mentor women employees at Wipro. The women mentoring programme has expanded to include 80 mentors for 100 women leaders from 55-60 mentors 3 years ago. The women employees being mentored are at a middle management level with 8-15 years of work experience, and are mentored by senior managers who are general managers and VPs. “At this stage, structured guidance helps women leaders find balance and set new levels of success,” says Sunita Cherian, VP, HR, and head, diversity at Wipro. Cherian says the programme has helped the organisation retain and nurture high-performing women employees – attrition levels in this group has been among the lowest. Apart from professional development and skill enhancement, themes also include dealing with grey areas and conflicts faced at work. Some of the recent initiatives of the diversity and inclusion council at PepsiCo include 'Fortifying your Fortitude' workshops to equip women to deal with various life stages and negotiating and networking sessions. In a bid to understand the career aspirations and challenges of women employees, Tata Power conducted a detailed survey aimed at them recently. “The programe covered various aspects, including enabling women leaders to interact with organisational leadership, gender sensitisation, experience sharing with successful women leaders and topics on work-lifeb alance, people management, and emotional intelligence,” says Chetan Tolia, chief human resources officer at Tata Power.
“A technical expert or a people manager. I was confused about which of the two areas would suit me in a leadership role, going forward, so I decided to seek help,” recalls Agarwal.
SAP Labs had sent out mentorship invites to female employees like Agarwal last year, who were expected to put in their requests through applications. The company had published the list of mentors-senior professionals in the company on a portal.
Over sessions with a mentor who had been voted as one of the best managers in the company, Agarwal was familiarised with people and emotional management skills, and was evaluated and analysed for both the roles by exploring her blind spots over a period of time.“I could shadow my manager, and was encouraged to learn how she managed to balance her work with personal passions, an area which I had been neglecting.She got up at 5 am everyday to practise Carnatic music. I was also made to realise that work is part of life and for the wheel of life to be complete, I had to learn to balance work and family time,” she says.
For Agarwal’s colleague, Priya Ramamurthy, an associate manager for business by design, it was about improving networking skills. “I was used to the same set of people in my environment, and my mentor had handled multiple teams and through him, I learnt the art of networking with diverse people across steams,” she says.Tohelp her overcome her inhibitions, Ramamurthy’s mentor even egged her on to present a paper at SAP TechEd, India’s largest technology event with over 5000+ attendees from the industry. “I learnt the importance of building a network and being able to put forward my achievements to others in the corporate world,” she says. From becoming more assertive at the time of appraisal conversations and the art of negotiations to networking more aggressively with their male superiors, certain companies are putting in place exhaustive and expansive measures to groom their women leaders to take on their male counterparts.
Over the past six months, Maruti Suzuki has introduced three key programmes for mid-managerial women professionals to facilitate their development. While Women Integrated Leadership Development, or WILD, focuses on enhancing their influencing skills by managing perceptions, Aakanksha or I Can Lead encourages women to participate in external forums, where they could learn from each other’s experiences and sharpen their skills. Multitask-her aims to prepare women to juggle multiple roles by working smart, improving their self esteem and managing stress. “The idea of these specialised programmes for women is to prepare them for leadership roles in the company and thereby expanding the leadership pipeline for future. We are confident these programmes will help our female talent to groom themselves for bigger roles,” says SY Siddiqui, COO, administration, Maruti Suzuki.
Padmaja Alaganandan, leader of PwC’s people and change practice, cites the example of women managers being coached on handling appraisal conversations in a company in the services industry.“Coaching was imparted to women managers in this company on how to handle appraisals. It was not about blowing your horn but they were told to not be too coy either. There was a need to train them on how to do that,” she says.
SAP Labs introduced coaching programmes for its women leaders in the third quarter of 2013 and divided them into sets: emerging managers and emerging leaders. Emerging leaders included women with 12-18 years of work experience while the eligibility for emerging managerswas6-10 years.The company brought in 30 coaches to train women to get better at leveraging their networks and negotiate and balance work and family life. The programmes have clocked 700-800 hours till now.
“For emerging managers, issues are generally more technical and can generally be solved through mentoring and training. For emerging leaders, concerns are more complex and are generally softer in nature and get solved through higher tools like coaching / observing through shadowing,” says Sheenam Ohrie, head of diversity and inclusion, Sap.
More leaders are emerging to mentor women employees at Wipro. The women mentoring programme has expanded to include 80 mentors for 100 women leaders from 55-60 mentors 3 years ago. The women employees being mentored are at a middle management level with 8-15 years of work experience, and are mentored by senior managers who are general managers and VPs. “At this stage, structured guidance helps women leaders find balance and set new levels of success,” says Sunita Cherian, VP, HR, and head, diversity at Wipro. Cherian says the programme has helped the organisation retain and nurture high-performing women employees – attrition levels in this group has been among the lowest. Apart from professional development and skill enhancement, themes also include dealing with grey areas and conflicts faced at work. Some of the recent initiatives of the diversity and inclusion council at PepsiCo include 'Fortifying your Fortitude' workshops to equip women to deal with various life stages and negotiating and networking sessions. In a bid to understand the career aspirations and challenges of women employees, Tata Power conducted a detailed survey aimed at them recently. “The programe covered various aspects, including enabling women leaders to interact with organisational leadership, gender sensitisation, experience sharing with successful women leaders and topics on work-lifeb alance, people management, and emotional intelligence,” says Chetan Tolia, chief human resources officer at Tata Power.
ANUMEHA
CHATURVEDI NEW DELHI ET140318
No comments:
Post a Comment