ICICI to Let Women Work from Home
WOMEN ON TOP Cos across
sectors announce various initiatives to make life and work easier for fairer
sex
Tinaz Jokhi, assistant
manager, operations, was dealing with the pressure of changes in life owing to
her recent marriage. Suchita Gaonkar, who works with user acceptance testing
team, was finding her daily commute to office after taking care of two kids too
taxing.Vishakha Chauhan, who was in the final stages of her pregnancy, felt
that though she was fit enough to work, the commute to work was just not
possible for her at this stage.
On Monday, the bank,
keeping in mind the business case for retaining such women who very often opt
to drop out from the workplace at key life stages, announced an initiative
called iWork@home that uses technology to enable women employees to work from
home for an extended period of time depending on their needs.
Employees will be provided
access to their required operating system in a safe and secure manner to create
a seamless office-like environment, initially for a period of up to one year.
The technology platform has been developed by ICICI Bank in partnership with
students of IIT Delhi.
“We wanted to create a
stronger support system for women to ensure that they do not leave the
workforce at key life stages. We decided to use technology to make life simpler
for women managers,“ said Chanda Kochhar, MD at ICI CI Bank. The bank will roll
out the facility across several core functions and at the same time ensure that
there is no loss of productivity.
iWork@home has the
potential to become a highly scalable programme and will allow women managers
to avail themselves of the facility for long periods of time, said Kochhar. It
has a three-level security protocol to ensure that only the concerned employee
can access the system. The bank has also designed a unique facial recognition
technology to ensure that no one can impersonate the employee and get access to
its applications. Besides, the bank will now provide women managers with
children up to three years of age the cost of travel and stay of the child, and
caregiver.“This will help our young managers focus on their work without
emotional stress of staying away from their children,“ said Kochhar.
Experts welcomed the bank's
move.
“ICICI's leadership in the
space of gender parity speaks loud and clear with the number of women leaders
the bank has sent out to the world,“ said Saundarya Rajesh, founder of Avtar
Career Creators & FLEXI Careers India.
Rica Bhattacharyya
|
ET9MAR16
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