Cos put safety first for women in field
work
The
value of gender diversity at workplace has been well recognized. But India Inc
is often stumped by challenges that crop up when women employees are deployed
in the field, especially in semiurban and rural areas. Be it activation
officers in a telecom company or salespersons in an FMCG firm, women employees
do face challenges relating to security or even availability of sanitation
facilities.
As
a result, there are not many takers among women for field work. “Women
participation in such jobs is stagnant. Women's hiring for sales-related
functions has slowed from about 13% prior to December 2009 to an average of
about 10.5% since then. Also, such growth has been observed at the entry level;
only a handful of them aspire to move up the sales ladder,“ says Rituparna
Chakraborty , senior VP, TeamLease Services.
Now,
with an eye on diversity and to ensure that they are equal opportunity
employers, many companies are walking hat extra mile to meet the needs of women
employees engaged in field work. “In one of our open houses, a woman employee
mentioned that she doesn't drink water (sometimes during the entire day) when
she is out on the field as she doesn't have access to a clean hygienic toilet. This
was an eye opener,“ admits Suvamoy Roy Choudhury , director-HR at Vodafone
India.
Over
the past four months, Vodafone has worked with its distributor network and
today nearly 2,000 safe and hygienic toilets are available bene iting
3,000-plus women emp oyees across the country , including at A2 locations (the
touch point for activation field officials), Vodafone's mini and rural stores.
Many Voda one units have used google maps to tag toilets on the beat plan of a
woman employee and provide it to her. Several remote areas, such as Tawang, a
snowcapped mountainous region in Arunachal Pradesh, more than 300 km away from
the nearest town of Tezpur, have also been covered. More than 600-plus
distributors have joined up `Project Comfort' as this initiative is called.
Vodafone has set down certain cleanliness parameters that each toilet needs to
adhere to and the distributor could spend between Rs 5,000 and Rs 7,000 monthly
for maintaining cleanliness. “We have agreed that whenever we deploy a woman in
a new location, we will ensure there is a toilet every 25-30 km,“ adds
Choudhury .
“When
it comes to safety , we see larger companies handle it systematically . For
instance, by having an embargo on work timings or using GPS systems for
ensuring safety during travel,“ adds Chakraborty .
Companies
such as Godrej, P&G and ITC vouched that safety is of paramount importance.
“We look beyond entitlements in our travel policies, rent cars via approved
agencies only and encourage women team members to team up with male field
officers or area sales managers during market visits in certain areas,“ says
Rahul Gama, head-HR at Godrej Consumer Products.
Sonali
Roychowdhury , HR director at P&G, adds, “From a rigorous due diligence on
all potential travel locations to customized safety guideli nes, our
`travel-safe' policy ensures our employees are well equipped.“
Says
Chandana Ghosh, head-HR, FMCG Trade Marketing and Distribution, at ITC, “We
ensure quality accommodation and transportation arrangements for women
employees on the field. There is also a high degree of sensitization about
women safety among the field staff. During the training periods, when exposure
is being given to non-metro markets, they are normally accompanied by reliable
male colleagues.“
Some
companies prefer to rely on local hires for rural or semi-urban markets, thus
mitigating some of the challenges involved. “In the semi-urban markets, we,
through an intermediary party , indirectly employ local women as our beauty
associates to market our range of skincare products to local beauty parlours.
They understand the local sensitivities and know the challenges of their market
environment,“ says V Krishnan, executive director-HR at Dabur.
|
Lubna
Kably
|
|
Mumbai:
|
TOI1DEC15
No comments:
Post a Comment