WOMEN SPECIAL .....................Genpact Opens its Doors to Top-Notch Women Dropouts

Genpact Opens its Doors to Top-Notch Women Dropouts





Through Career 2.0, Genpact plans to hire 30-50 mid-to-senior-level women in various roles this year. The company will offer them flexible, customised workdays to help them revive their careers 

In one of the biggest gender diversity initiatives till date, Genpact has rolled out an ambitious plan to hire women who have taken a mid-career break for any reason.

Called Career 2.0, the programme -targeted at qualified women who have worked in great companies -is meant to eventually feed the leadership pipeline at senior levels.

“Diversity is connected positively with innovation. An increase in women has been linked to a group's effectiveness in solving difficult problems. Here at Genpact, we drive gender diversity even harder as a business-critical mission versus a `nice-to-do',“ said NV Tyagarajan, CEO and president at Genpact.

There are close to 15 lakh women in India who have had to take a mid-career break for some reason or the other, according to estimates.

Genpact will offer flexible, customised workdays to encourage such women to revive their career.

“There are qualified women who perhaps do not know how to make a career comeback. We are more than happy to leverage their talent. Our approach is that through the use of Genpact policies, we give these women flexibility and full-time roles,“ said Piyush Mehta, who leads Genpact's global HR function.

Genpact plans to hire 30-50 mid-to-senior-level women in various roles this calendar year through Career 2.0.

It will hire women with 7-10 years of experience in mid-to-senior-level roles across functions and will offer them customised work days. “Some want to work half-a-day, some can't work late in the evening. We want to offer flexibility to this set of super talented women,“ said Mehta.

The company is only looking at quality experience. The gap and time spent out of workplace is irrelevant, he said. Mehta cited three reasons for initiating the programme. First, the company needed more women in workforce because it's a business imperative.“Women tend to grow sooner, better, and attract other women employees.Companies that have women in leadership roles perform better,“ he said.

Second, the company believes since women are half the population of the world, it should be the same for compa nies. Third, the company wants to dif ferentiate itself through Career 2.0 as an employer. “We believe we can differ entiate ourselves because we have the levers to make it happen,“ Mehta said.

Genpact has 68,000 employees. Of this 38% are women. The percentage of women in the top 600 in the company is much lower, at 20%. “This is exactly the challenge we want to deal with. We want to grow Career 2.0 joinees to this level,“ said Mehta.

The company is using social media to reach out to potential hires.

Career 2.0 is one of several measures Genpact has initiated to achieve its diversity and inclusion targets.

The company is improving female representation at the hiring funnel stage by ensuring it evaluates at least 50% women and doesn't end up interviewing only male candidates for a position.

This is being carried out by strengthening sourcing of diverse talent through various initiatives including empanelment of vendors who specialise in hiring of diverse candidates, and employee referral programmes.

Genpact is also giving its male employ ees `unconscious bias' training to make them aware of unconscious biases at the workplace.

“We have initiated this training intervention first with our global leadership council and the senior candidate facing executive hiring teams. This will be followed by front line managers,“ Mehta said.

Genpact ensures 40% participation of women in leadership development programmes. Its flagship `Genpact operations leadership development' (GOLD) programme, which focuses on preparing high potential managers for leadership roles, is a case in point. The company has leveraged this programme to identify and grow future women leaders for large operating roles.

Beyond softer skilled and more relationship-based roles, Genpact lets its women excel in domains that have hitherto been male-dominated. The most recent batch of GOLD graduates has a 43% female participation.

An internal benchmarking study indicated that business units with more women in leadership teams exhibited higher financial performance and better employee retention, Mehta said..

Saumya Bhattacharya

 ET7JUL15