Companies are taking various measures to increase the gender diversity numbers. These include hiring more women from campuses, offering flexibility at work and adding more women in leadership, HR heads and staffing sector experts said.
The increase in the number of women entering the workforce at the entry level is despite the ‘break-up’ phenomenon of women quitting corporate careers to pursue gigs or entrepreneurship, said Avtar founder-president Saundarya Rajesh. At Tata Group company Titan, the gender diversity ratio has increased from 26.9% in 2022 to 28.6% last year. It is now targeting to have women to account for over 35% of the headcount in 2024, chief people officer Swadesh Behera told ET.
“Our employee diversity should ideally mirror our customer base and hence there is a big effort to increase the gender representation in our organisation,” he said. The company is also focusing on giving flexible working wherever possible.
Other companies like Tata Steel, PepsiCo and Airtel are also taking similar steps. Tata Steel is looking at increasing hiring numbers in 2024 versus 2023 to support its expansion plans, as it aims to take capacity to 40 million tonnes capacity by 2030. “All along this, diversity will be our area of focus as we are working to achieve 25% diverse workforce by 2025,” said Atrayee Sanyal, VP of HR management.
